Industry, retail fuel economic revival
Print Edition
CHINA’S economy rebounded in November with industrial production and retail sales growth accelerating, while fixed-asset investment maintained its upward momentum, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Saturday.
Industrial production rose 6.2 percent year on year in the month, accelerating from 5.6 percent in October, and it’s quickest rate since June.
Retail sales increased by 11.2 percent to 2.79 trillion yuan (US$432 billion), which though only slightly faster than the 11 percent growth seen in October, extended an almost flawless upward trend from a year-low of 10 percent in April.
Fixed-asset investment rose 10.2 percent in the first 11 months to 49.7 trillion yuan, the same rate as for the first 10 months, the bureau said.
Li Maoyu, an analyst at Changjiang Securities Co, said the data, especially the figures for industrial output, were much better than expected.
“The manufacturing sector has been weak throughout the year due to the government’s efforts to deal with overcapacity, so the rebound is a sign of a revival in the sector,” he said.
Jiang Yuan, a researcher at the statistics bureau, said the growth was led by the car sector and other strategic industries.
“Production of high energy-consuming industries like nonferrous metals continued to contract due to China’s restructuring endeavors, while automobiles and other high-tech sectors all performed fairly well in the month,” he said.
Car production rose 13 percent in November, a sharp acceleration from the 7.3 percent growth recorded in October, due in part to the lower purchase tax on green and small vehicles, Jiang said.
High-tech manufacturing rose 10.3 percent in the month, the bureau said, without providing absolute figures.
The major contributors were aviation and related machinery, which rose 26.9 percent, electronics (up 13.8 percent), information technology (up 10.6 percent), and pharmaceuticals (up 8.8 percent).
The growth in retail sales was partly due to the Singles Day online shopping spree on November 11, the bureau said.
Sales at Alibaba’s Tmall jumped 60 percent on the day to 91.2 billion yuan.
In the first 11 months of the year, online sales rose 34.5 percent year on year to 3.45 trillion yuan, accounting for 12.6 percent of all retail sales for the period, the data showed.
Despite the positive signs in some areas, Liu Ligang, an economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group, said traditional growth drivers such as industrial production and fixed-asset investment remained relatively weak in November.
More weight should be given to the service sector when evaluating economic activity, he said.
China’s gross domestic product rose 6.9 percent in the first three quarters, with the third-quarter rate of 6.9 percent being the slowest since 2009. To help bolster growth, the central bank has lowered both benchmark interest and banks’ reserve requirement ratio rates five times this year.
Sheng Laiyun, a spokesman for the statistics bureau, said last week that China’s economy was showing signs of a recovery and that the government is confident of achieving its full-year growth target of about 7 percent.
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