Shanghai maintained its economic growth target for this year at the same pace as last year’s 7.5 percent as the city seeks to develop its new free-trade zone (FTZ).
“We seek substantive progress with pilot reforms” this year and will make “all-out efforts” to build the zone, Shanghai Mayor Yang Xiong (楊雄) said in a work report to the municipal people’s congress yesterday.
He cited plans for cross-border yuan settlement, yuan convertibility under the capital account and interest rate liberalization.
Photo: AFP
At least nine Chinese provinces have set lower growth targets for this year than last year, adding to signs that the nation’s expansion will slow as the government focuses on policies to sustain the economy in the long term. In September last year, Shanghai inaugurated a free-trade zone as a testing ground for free-market policies as part of a broader goal to become a global financial services and logistics center by 2020.
Shanghai’s economy grew an estimated 7.7 percent last year, Yang said, driven by services industries. Finance, information services, culture and creative industries expanded at double-digit rates, he said.
Inflation in China’s commercial hub will be “kept in line with the national price control target,” after consumer prices rose 2.3 percent last year, Yang said.
Urban unemployment will be capped under 4.5 percent, the same as last year, he said.
China is scheduled to announce fourth-quarter and full-year GDP data today. The economy may have expanded 7.7 percent last year, according to the median estimate of analysts in a Bloomberg News survey.
That would be the same as 2012’s pace, which was the weakest since 1999’s 7.6 percent.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said its materials management head, Vanessa Lee (李文如), had tendered her resignation for personal reasons. The personnel adjustment takes effect tomorrow, TSMC said in a statement. The latest development came one month after Lee reportedly took leave from the middle of last month. Cliff Hou (侯永清), senior vice president and deputy cochief operating officer, is to concurrently take on the role of head of the materials management division, which has been under his supervision, TSMC said. Lee, who joined TSMC in 2022, was appointed senior director of materials management and
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