China’s industrial output strengthened in the first two months of this year, official data showed yesterday, led by production at state enterprises.
Output at factories and workshops expanded 7.2 percent year-on-year in January and last month combined, the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics said, beating the 6.2 percent in December last year and the 6.2 percent forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of analysts.
The higher output comes even as authorities press on with their fight against smog by clamping down on polluting heavy industries.
Photo: Reuters
“The national economy has maintained stable and sound development in the first two months of 2018,” bureau spokesman Mao Shengyong (毛盛勇) said.
It “is a good start for high-quality development” Mao said, using Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) new buzzword for the “new era” economy China is aiming for.
The retail sector — which China is counting on to propel its high-quality development — recorded solid growth, a sign that China’s rebalancing from its export and investment-led economic model to one driven by consumer spending is well under way.
Retail sales for the first two months rose 9.7 percent annually, up from 9.4 percent in December last year, but slightly below forecasts of 9.8 percent.
Online sales also boomed in the first two months, jumping 37.3 percent annually, the data showed.
Fixed asset investment grew 7.9 percent year-on-year for the first two months, beating expectations of 7 percent, and reversing a trend of falling investment in the second half of last year.
Meanwhile, home sales growth slowed in the first two months, amid an almost two-year-long government campaign to cool the property market.
Sales by value, excluding state-subsidized affordable housing, rose 16 percent from a year earlier to 1.06 trillion yuan (US$168 billion) in the January-to-February period, according to Bloomberg calculations based on official data released yesterday.
That is down from a 21 percent pace in December last year.
The slower growth comes as authorities sent a stronger signal at the Chinese National People’s Congress on efforts to curb property speculation and tame runaway prices.
In other signs of a slowdown, developers bought less land than a year earlier, the first decline in eight months.
New starts, a leading indicator of real-estate investment, rose at the slowest pace in three months, gaining 2.9 percent, the data showed.
China’s deleveraging is making it harder for developers to access funds, Guotai Junan International Co (國泰君安) property analyst Van Liu (劉斐凡) said.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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