Beijing: China’s GDP growth likely slowed further in the second quarter, an AFP survey has found, as a slowdown in investment and trade weighed on the world’s second-largest economy.The median forecast in a poll of 14 economists indicates gross domestic product (GDP) expanded 6.9 per cent in April-June, marginally down from 7 per cent in the first three months of this year.That would be the worst quarterly result since the first three months of 2009, when China’s economy expanded by 6.6 per cent.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) will release the official GDP figures for the first quarter of 2015 on Wednesday. China’s volatile stock markets have grabbed headlines this month after the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index fell more than 30 per cent in less than four weeks, before reversing course in the last two trading days. But economists are focused on more fundamental issues when assessing its overall health.
“According to the figures we have now, economic activities remained sluggish, particularly fixed asset investment, which grew 11.4 per cent in May, a multi-year low,” Liu Li-Gang, Hong Kong-based ANZ economist, said.“Exports were weak and imports were even more so,” he said. Chinese authorities want investment to slow as part of their plan to diversify economic growth away from big-ticket projects to increasingly wealthy consumers. But too fast a deceleration can be harmful.
According to Li Ruoyu, an analyst at the State Information Centre, a government think-tank in Beijing, new restrictions on local government debt and finance vehicles have limited lower-level authorities’ ability to fund infrastructure projects.
