High-rise residential and commercial buildings are being constructed near Dongyu Road, Qiantan, in the Pudong New Area of Shanghai, China, on March 15, 2024. Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty ImagesBEIJING — China’s economic data for the first two months of the year beat analysts’ expectations across the board on Monday.Retail sales rose 5.5%, better than the 5.2% increase forecast in a Reuters poll, while industrial production climbed 7%, compared with estimates of 5% growth.Fixed asset investment rose by 4.2%, more than the 3.2% estimated by analysts.The unemployment rate in February for cities came in at 5.3%.Online retail sales of physical goods rose 14.4% from a year earlier during the first two months of the year.Investment into real estate fell 9% in the first two months of the year from a year ago. Investment in infrastructure rose by 6.3% while those in manufacturing increased by 9.4% during that time.”We believe China’s sequential growth momentum remained solid in Q1 despite notable divergence across sectors,” Goldman Sachs analysts said in a report Monday following the data release. “However, to secure the ambitious “around 5%” growth target this year, more policy easing is still necessary, especially on the demand-side (e.g., fiscal, housing and consumption).”Despite the upbeat results, National Bureau of Statistics Spokesperson Liu Aihua cautioned that domestic demand remains insufficient.She told reporters that real estate remains in a period of “adjustment,” and that the overall economy is “in a critical period of recovery, transformation and upgrading,” according to a CNBC translation of her comments in Mandarin.When asked about the unemployment rate for people aged 16 to 24, Liu said the figures would be released a few days after the monthly press conference on economic data.Holiday boostEconomic figures for January and February are typically comb …
Article Attribution | Read More at Article Source
[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnHigh-rise residential and commercial buildings are being constructed near Dongyu Road, Qiantan, in the Pudong New Area of Shanghai, China, on March 15, 2024. Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty ImagesBEIJING — China’s economic data for the first two months of the year beat analysts’ expectations across the board on Monday.Retail sales rose 5.5%, better than the 5.2% increase forecast in a Reuters poll, while industrial production climbed 7%, compared with estimates of 5% growth.Fixed asset investment rose by 4.2%, more than the 3.2% estimated by analysts.The unemployment rate in February for cities came in at 5.3%.Online retail sales of physical goods rose 14.4% from a year earlier during the first two months of the year.Investment into real estate fell 9% in the first two months of the year from a year ago. Investment in infrastructure rose by 6.3% while those in manufacturing increased by 9.4% during that time.”We believe China’s sequential growth momentum remained solid in Q1 despite notable divergence across sectors,” Goldman Sachs analysts said in a report Monday following the data release. “However, to secure the ambitious “around 5%” growth target this year, more policy easing is still necessary, especially on the demand-side (e.g., fiscal, housing and consumption).”Despite the upbeat results, National Bureau of Statistics Spokesperson Liu Aihua cautioned that domestic demand remains insufficient.She told reporters that real estate remains in a period of “adjustment,” and that the overall economy is “in a critical period of recovery, transformation and upgrading,” according to a CNBC translation of her comments in Mandarin.When asked about the unemployment rate for people aged 16 to 24, Liu said the figures would be released a few days after the monthly press conference on economic data.Holiday boostEconomic figures for January and February are typically comb …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
