Economic Trend News
- China's economy continues to maintain steady, rapid growth in first half
Date: 5-Jul-2007 Sources: (People's Daily)
Yao Jingyuan, chief economist of the National Bureau of Statistics, said that China's economy had maintained a steady and rapid growth in the first half of the year. However, within economic development, some major problems also exist, including extremely fast industrial growth, the pressure of a large foreign trade surplus, and growing pressure from a price hike.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture, although some areas were affected by natural disasters; this year China's summer grain was still harvested. Overall production is expected to increase for four consecutive years, and annual production is expected to be the highest in history.
China's industrial production was growing faster in the first half of the year, and the profits of industrial enterprises experienced a high margin of growth. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, in the first five months of this year, the added value of China's upper scale industries increased by 18.1 percent more than in the same period last year, and these industries realized profits of 902.6 billion Yuan, up 42.1 percent over the same period of last year. The composite index of industrial economic performance improved significantly.
Along with an increase of people's income, the level of consumption by urban and rural residents continued to improve. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the total retail sales value of China's social consumer goods reached 3.50178 trillion Yuan from January to May of this year, up 15.2 percent over the same period of last year; but consumption growth was much lower than investment growth. Due to the rapid rise in food prices recently- especially the rapid increase in pork prices in some large and medium-size cities-China's consumer price index (CPI) was pulled for several months to increase by more than 3 percent over the same period of last year, which will cause pressure for price hikes.
Since the beginning of this year, due to strong demand in the domestic and international markets, China's imports and exports have continued to increase robustly. It is expected that the total value of imports and exports will reach nearly US$1 trillion in the first half of the year, up 24 percent more than in the same period last year. Many domestic enterprises are rushing to stimulate exports before the new policy on export tax rebates is implemented, which will lead to a sharp rise in the trade surplus. It had reached US$85.7 billion between January and May, and exceeded US$100 billion in the first half of the year.
In order to respond to unresolved problems in the current economy, State Council departments have introduced several policy measures to stabilize, perfect, and implement macro-controls, including the guidance and control of capital flow, managing the liquidity surplus; eliminating any drag in production; controlling the construction of high energy-consuming, high-pollution industries; and adjusting export tax rebates and export tariff policies on some products.
Yao Jingyuan thinks that, along with the gradual implementation of policies, China's rate of consumption will continue to increase in the second half of the year; export growth will fall slightly; and import growth will increase at the same time. This trend will effectively slow down the extreme growth rate of the trade surplus. The economy will continue to maintain steady and rapid growth throughout the year.
Sponsor Results:
