NDRC chief upbeat on 7.5% growth target
Print Edition
China will meet its annual economic growth target of 7.5 percent this year, the chief of the country’s top economic planner insisted yesterday.
“To achieve this goal, we still have to make arduous efforts,” Xu Shaoshi, head of the National Development and Reform Commission, told Xinhua news agency in an online interview.
China’s economy has been stuck in a protracted slowdown, easing to 7.5-percent growth in the second quarter from 7.7 percent in the first three months. Worries are growing that the prolonged slowdown could affect the global economy.
On Tuesday, the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee pledged at a conference to keep the economy growing steadily in the second half of this year, amid “extremely complicated domestic and international conditions.”
“The central authorities have sent a clear signal that they will keep their policies stable and persistent. The policy is aimed at creating long-term and stable expectations for the market,” Xu said.
To maintain steady growth, the government will introduce measures to boost consumer spending, maintain “reasonable growth of investment” and push “human-centered” urbanization, he noted.
Retail sales, a key indicator of consumer spending, increased 12.7 percent from a year earlier, picking up by 0.3 percentage points from the January-March period. Online shopping sales surged 80 percent, NDRC data show.
Private capital will be encouraged to invest in nursing homes, cultural and tourism industries, healthcare facilities and educational institutions. Credit spending will also be welcomed, according to Xu.
The growth of fixed-asset investment, a measure of government and private spending on infrastructure, stood at 20.1 percent during the first half of the year, down 0.8 percentage points over the first quarter of the year. Private investment grew 23.4 percent in January-June, accounting for 63.7 percent of the total.
“With industrialization, informationization, urbanization and agricultural modernization picking up pace, China still enjoys big investment potential with a solid foundation. We will likely see stable growth in investment this year,” Xu said.
He added that the government will continue to clear barriers for private investment in infrastructure construction, key national projects and financial institution restructuring.
“A long-term mechanism for the stable and healthy development of the real estate industry will be set up to promote steady growth of property investment,” the NDRC chief said.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the central authorities agreed to continue to coordinate the tasks of stabilizing growth, restructuring the economy and promoting reforms. In the next step, Xu said, the government will “waste no time” in introducing more reform measures to stimulate the economy.
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