CHINESE airports, more than 70 percent of which are losing money, will cut prices in shops to boost sales of cosmetics, clothes and food.

"We have lost an opportunity worth billions of yuan," Liu Shaocheng, director of the General Administration of Civil Aviation's policy research department, said on Wednesday in a speech at a conference in Beijing. All airports will make price cuts, he said, without providing a timeframe.

Retail and other non-aviation sales have grown at about a quarter the pace of traffic at China's airports, as passengers shun US$10 cups of coffee and goods costing twice as much as in downtown stores, Bloomberg News said. Airports in the world's second-largest aviation market earn less than 40 percent of revenue from such businesses, compared with 60 percent in Singapore and Frankfurt, according to the regulator.

"People have got used to the idea that sold-in-airport means expensive," said Li Jun, an aviation analyst at Everbright Securities Co in Shanghai. "But the opportunity is there, especially for hubs like Beijing and Shanghai."

Beijing Capital International Airport, the nation's busiest, more than doubled retail sales last month after cutting prices as much as 21 percent, said Qian Liqin, chairman of Capital Airport Commercial & Trading Co. "We need to target as many as consumers as we can," Qian said.

The airport's new terminal, due to open in March, will add 45,200 square meters of retail space, according to the aviation regulator.

Shanghai Pudong International Airport will add 28,000 square meters of shops when a second terminal starts operation next year.