China’s economy slowed in the first quarter of the year but inflation lingered at 12-year highs as food prices continued to soar, the government said yesterday.
The world’s fourth-largest economy grew 10.6 percent in the first three months of this year from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a much anticipated press conference in Beijing.
“Amid impact of the spreading and growing [US] subprime crisis, policies were put into place in an effective way leading to a steady and fast economic growth,” said Li Xiaochao (李曉超), the bureau’s spokesman.
China’s economy expanded by 11.7 percent in the first quarter of last year, and 11.9 percent for all of 2007, the bureau’s data shows.
The consumer price index, the main inflation gauge, rose 8 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier after a slight easing of inflation last month, the bureau said.
Inflation was 8.3 percent last month, it said. In February, it had reached 8.7 percent, the highest since mid-1996.
The government is extremely sensitive to inflation figures, fearing that excessive price rises could trigger discontent across the nation and heighten the risk of social unrest.
Underlining this danger, the government said food prices, of particular concern to society’s poorest, were up by a steep 21 percent in the first quarter.
Experts say the government is struggling to find ways to rein in inflation without at the same time causing too much of a dent in economic growth.
China’s fixed asset investments, the main indicator of state-funded spending on new productive capacity, rose 24.6 percent in the first quarter of this year from a year earlier, the bureau said.
Industrial output, a key measure of the activity level in the nation’s plants and sweatshops, expanded 16.4 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier.
Chinese retail sales rose 20.6 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, the bureau said.
The growth was 5.7 percentage points higher than in the same three-month period last year, it said.
This is likely to reflect the high inflation level, as retail sales are in nominal terms.
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