China’s 4 trillion yuan (US$586 billion) stimulus package may contribute between 1.5 percent and 1.9 percent to the country’s economic growth this year, the State Council’s research group said.
The spending will help China realize its target of 8 percent expansion this year, Development Research Center of the State Council Director Zhang Yutai (張玉台) said in a broadcast from the China Development Forum in Beijing yesterday.
“China has the ability to become the first in the world to step out of the crisis and keep stable growth for the mid and long term,” he said.
Speaking at the same forum, Vice Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) also reaffirmed the country’s growth target for this year, saying some industries “have seen signs of recovery.”
The government is hoping the stimulus spending will increase domestic demand and counter a collapse in exports that has led the world’s third-largest economy to its weakest growth in seven years.
“China has the potential to further boost domestic spending,” National Development and Reform Commission Vice Director Zhu Zhixing (朱之鑫) said at the forum.
China has announced a record 950 billion yuan budget deficit this year. The risk posed by the deficit is “under government control,” Vice Minister of Finance Wang Jun (王軍) said at the forum.
Not everyone shares China’s optimism it will reach the 8 percent target this year. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development could cut its forecast for the country’s economic growth to as little as 6 percent, secretary- general Angel Gurria said on Friday, while the IMFexpects growth of 6.7 percent.
Four months after China announced the stimulus package, economic indicators are mixed. Investment jumped a more-than-estimated 26.5 percent from a year earlier in the first two months, and bank loans quadrupled last month, while industrial output growth slid as exports plunged by a record.
GDP expanded 6.8 percent in the fourth quarter, compared with 9 percent for all of last year and 13 percent for 2007.
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
RSS