Issue No.1, 2018 (Total 97)

2018-3-30

From January to February 2018, China’s economy maintained a steady performance across the board. The industrial added value increased by 7.2% year on year, up by 0.9 percentage points. The industrial electricity consumption increased by 4.3 percentage points year on year. Compared with the same period of last year, the growth rate of investment witnessed a minimum downturn and that of consumption inched up, while the growth rate of export picked up. CPI grew by a large margin and PPT registered a slow growth. Price maintained a moderate performance. The inventory buildups of houses continued to decline and housing prices turned stable. Meanwhile, the growth rate of investment on real estate improved. The credit and social financing stock grew rapidly and the exchange rate of RMB and foreign exchange reserves remained stable. On the whole, China’s economy maintained a steady and sound growth momentum and is projected to get off to a good start in the first quarter. Yet, it should be noted that the external uncertain factors have increased prominently and the high growth rate of export is hard to be maintained. In addition, the investment in infrastructure has slowed down prominently and the growth of investment still bears downward pressure. Local SOEs still face prominent problems of high debt and low profits. The economy in some provinces and cities has slowed down sharply. In a bid to maintain a steady and sound economic growth performance, we need to fully put into effect the arrangements set out at the Central Economic Work Conference and at the two sessions of the 13th National People’s Congress and the 13th Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference held his year. We need to uphold the general principle of pursuing progress while ensuring stability, implement a proactive fiscal policy to increase efficiency with joint efforts, keep a neutral and sound monetary policy, properly balance the relations between deleveraging, strengthening regulation and maintaining appropriate and steady liquidity, push ahead with supply-side structural reform, strive to revitalize the real economy, promote the reform in fundamental and key fields, handle trade conflicts appropriately, focus on guiding and stabilizing market expectations and ensure a high-quality economic development trend.