China’s GDP expected to grow 7.5% in second quarter: report

China’s economy is expected to grow 7.5 percent in the second quarter of this year due to obvious signs indicating a pickup in the economy since May, a report forecast on Wednesday.

The forecast came after economic growth in the world’s second-largest economy slowed to 7.4 percent in the first quarter, marking the lowest rate of growth in six quarters.

In order to ease the downward pressure, the government has rolled out a raft of measures to ensure stable growth since April, including plans to boost investment in railways and affordable housing projects, tax reductions for small and micro-sized firms and cuts in reserve requirement ratios for certain banks, said the report, which was released by the International Finance Research Institute under Bank of China.

The report said that these initiatives have started to take effect in boosting the economy, as reflected by improvements in industrial output, consumption, exports and electric power generation.

Official data showed industrial production expanded at a faster pace in May by rising 8.8 percent year-on-year, accelerating 0.1 percentage point from April.

Retail sales in the first five months grew 12.1 percent, slightly higher than the 12 percent growth in the first four months.

Meanwhile, fixed-assets investment was generally steady with a growth of 17.2 percent year-on-year in the first five months.

The country’s statistical authority is scheduled to announce the second quarter data for GDP and other key economic indicators including industrial output, fixed-assets investment, and consumption on July 16.