China is still lending its way towards its 8% growth target for the year. Third-quarter growth has come in at 8.9%, with the National Bureau of Statistics (via Xinhua) pointing up strong fixed-asset investment and rising domestic demand offsetting the drop in exports. The economy expanded by 7.7% over the first nine months. M2, the [...]
Posts Tagged as ‘Economy’
September 11, 2009
Wen On The Economic Recovery
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao told the ‘Summer’ Davos meeting in Dalian that “China’s economic rebound is unstable, unbalanced and not yet solid”. Ain’t that the truth.
August 27, 2009
China Starts To Curb Excessive Inventory
The cutback in steel and and cement production that Beijing has ordered can be read to mean that the economic planners are confident the re-acceleration of growth is soundly based. Or it can be seen as continuing concern that the over lending that has fueled this year’s growth needs to be reined in further still. [...]
May 20, 2009
China Expands Stealth Stimulus Package
This Bystander noted a couple of days back that there was a risk that the stimulus cash would run out before the underlying economy regained vigor–and that might mean the additional stimulus money Prime Minister Wen Jiabao says he has in his back pocket might be brought out. Now comes news, via Xinhua, that Beijing [...]
May 18, 2009
Top-Up Stimulus On The Way?
This Bystander has noted before that the signs of revival in the economy are more to do with stimulus spending and pressed lending by state banks than a revival of trade and industry: exports in April were still down 22.6% from the same month a year earlier, energy usage, which correlates closely to industrial production, declined [...]
April 18, 2009
Eight Percent Growth And Damn The Torpedoes
Beijing has set itself a target of 8% GDP growth for the year and by hook or by crook it will get there.
First quarter growth, announced earlier this week, came in at 6.1%, its slowest pace since quarterly GDP numbers were first made public in 1992, down from 10.6% in the same quarter a year [...]
April 11, 2009
China’s Reserves Swell More Slowly
The country’s foreign exchange reserves grew in the first quarter by less than they did in the fourth quarter of last year. Reserves stood at $1.95 trillion at the end of March, the People’s Bank of China reports, up $7.7 trillion since the end of December, when they had shown a more than $40 billion [...]
April 9, 2009
Dr. Doom Is Down On China
The American economist Nouriel Roubini, famous for being a herald of the current global recession, is not known as Dr. Doom for nothing. Writing in his eponymous column in Forbes he is now forecasting that China’s GDP growth this year will be only 5%-6%, less than the 6.5% the IMF and World Bank are predicting [...]
April 6, 2009
Cement Sales Rise
Another crocus: Anhui Conch Cement, the country’s biggest cement maker, says sales volume rose 15% in the first quarter. Its executive director Guo Jingbin, says he expects demand to keep rising in the second quarter as stimulus infrastructure spending on roads, ports and railways kicks in. Guo is expecting fixed-asset investment to grow 15-20% this [...]
April 3, 2009
Another Sign of Economic Spring
One more crocus on the lawn: the purchasing managers index for March rose for the first time in six months; the index, a measure of manufacturing activity, also broke through the the 50 level that divides contraction from expansion. The usual caveats about treating a single month’s numbers with caution, but it is a sign, [...]
