China industrial output offers fresh sign of stability

BEIJING: China’s industrial output growth held steady in January and February, official data showed yesterday, providing further evidence of stability in the world’s second-largest economy despite slower retail sales growth.

Industrial output rose 6.3 per cent year-on-year in the first two months of 2017, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, slightly beating the 6.2 forecast in a Bloomberg News survey.

Retails sales, a key indicator of consumer spending, increased 9.5 per cent over the period, down from 10.2 per cent in the same period last year. Sales grew 10.9 per cent in December.

Fixed-asset investment, a gauge of infrastructure spending, rose 8.9 per cent year-on-year in January-February.

Real estate investment increased a surprising 8.9 per cent in the period, up from 3.0 per cent over the same stretch last year, despite tighter regulations to thwart speculators and guard against a feared property bubble.

Most data are “quite positive” and “apparently improving”, NBS spokesman Sheng Laiyun said in a news briefing.

The figures are the latest in a slew of upbeat data including positive fourth-quarter 2016 economic growth, and encouraging February results on factory activity, imports, and factory gate prices.

“China’s economy is opening the year with a good start, although pro-growth policies to shore up consumption in coming months are needed,” Gao Yuwei, a researcher at the Bank of China Ltd.’s Institute of International Finance, told Bloomberg News. — AFP