Chinese-made cars wait to be loaded onto a ship for export at Yantai port, China’s Shandong province, July 12, 2024.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Good pictures
BEIJING – China’s national statistics office said on Monday that the country’s second-quarter gross domestic product rose 4.7% year-on-year, missing expectations for 5.1% growth, according to a Reuters poll.
June retail sales also missed estimates, rising 2% compared to the 3.3% growth forecast.
Industrial production, however, came in at 5.3% in June from a year earlier, beating the 5% growth Reuters had estimated.
Urban fixed asset investment rose 3.9% in the first six months of the year, meeting expectations. Investment in infrastructure and manufacturing slowed growth on a year-to-date basis in June and May, while investment in real estate declined at the same rate of 10.1%.
The National Bureau of Statistics did not hold a press conference for the data release. China’s top policy meeting, the Third Plenum, begins Monday and ends Thursday.
“We need to work hard to stimulate the market and stimulate internal motivation,” the bureau said in an English-language press release.
It called for efforts to “consolidate and improve momentum for economic recovery and growth to ensure sustained and robust growth in the economy”.
The urban unemployment rate was 5% in June, unchanged from the previous month, the bureau said.
China’s GDP grew 5.3% in the first quarter.
China’s exports rose 8.6% from last year, more than expected. The customs data was released on Friday showed. But imports fell 2.3% year-on-year in June, missing expectations for a modest growth.
Other measures dampened domestic demand.
China’s consumer prices rose 0.2% in June, year over year, missing expectations. Core CPI, which strips out highly volatile food and energy prices, rose 0.6% year-on-year in June, slightly slower than the 0.7% increase in the first six months of the year.
China’s latest credit data released on Friday showed a sharp drop in the growth of broad money supply and new yuan loans in the first half of 2023.
Home loans increased by 1.46 trillion yuan ($200 billion) in the first six months of the year, nearly half of the 2.8 trillion yuan of new loans for this category last year. According to the People’s Bank of China.
Loans to businesses increased by 11 trillion yuan in the first half of the year, slightly lower than the 12.81 trillion yuan recorded in the same period last year.
“June money and credit data suggest that credit demand remains weak,” Goldman Sachs analysts said in a report Friday. “In recent policy communications, the PBOC continues to focus on improving monetary policy transmission and downplays the importance of aggregate credit growth. Looking ahead, the growth of new CNY loans and M2 may gradually slow further.”
