China's industrial output growth slows to 5.9%

BEIJING - China's value-added industrial output, an important economic indicator, grew 5.9 percent year on year in December, down from the 6.2-percent growth recorded in November, official data showed on Tuesday.

Year-on-year growth for 2015 was 6.1 percent, lower than the 8.3-percent growth in 2014, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said.

December industrial production growth was weaker than market expectations of 6 percent, but in line with Nomura's forecast, according to a Nomura Securities report to clients.

Industrial output, officially called value-added industrial output, is used to measure the activity of designated large enterprises with an annual turnover of at least 20 million yuan ($3.05 million).

Manufacturing output expanded 7 percent in 2015, 2.4 percentage points lower than the previous year. Mining output growth decelerated to 2.7 percent from 4.5 percent in 2014.

Last year, the output for electricity, heating, gas and water grew 1.4 percent, down from the 3.2-percent growth in 2014.

Industrial output of state-owned and state-controlled enterprises saw 1.4-percent growth year on year in 2015, while that of joint stock companies expanded by 7.3 percent. Meanwhile, industrial output of enterprises funded by overseas investors grew by 3.7 percent.

In 2015, the industrial output in the high-tech sector surged 10.2 percent year on year, significantly higher than the average growth for secondary industry.

In the first 11 months of 2015, total profits of designated large enterprises reached 5.54 trillion yuan, down 1.9 percent year on year, according to the NBS.

The latest data showed China's industrial upgrades and restructuring have been continuously advancing, the NBS said.

Amid the drive to restructure and optimize industry, the country aims to defuse overcapacity in traditional sectors such as iron and steel while facilitating growth in emerging ones.

The industrial output figure was released by the NBS along with other major economic indicators for December and all of 2015.

China's economy grew 6.9 percent year on year in 2015, the slowest annual expansion in a quarter of a century, while growth in the fourth quarter came in at 6.8 percent year on year, the lowest quarterly rate since the global financial crisis, the NBS data showed.