Slowing GDP growth within govt tolerance

BEIJING - China's gross domestic product (GDP) growth slowed to 7.6 percent in January-June of 2013, the weakest first-half performance in three years, but analysts said the slower growth is above the lower limit and the cost of reform.

Amid a continuous slowdown in the world's second-largest economy, the growth was in line with market expectations and was above the government's full-year target of 7.5 percent.

"It is not necessary to be too pessimistic; the bottom line in the government's two previous five-year plans was 7 percent. We should prepare for a fairly long difficult period as that is the cost of reform," said Yu Yongding, an economist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank.

China's full-year annual growth eased to 7.8 percent last year, its weakest since 1999, due to volatile external markets and the government's domestic tightening to tame property prices and inflation.

Growth in the second quarter stood at 7.5 percent, down from 7.7 percent during the first quarter, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Monday.

"China's economy has maintained a steady growth," Sheng Laiyun, a spokesman for the NBS, said at a press conference.

According to the NBS data, GDP totaled 24.8 trillion yuan ($4 trillion) in the first six months.

"Major economic indicators are still within reasonable ranges as expected, but the economic environment remains complex," Sheng said, adding that the market should play a better role to bring out the economy's intrinsic vigor.

The latest GDP figures headed a string of other data.

Industrial output increased 9.3 percent year on year in the first half of 2013, while the growth of fixed-asset investment, a measure of government and private spending on infrastructure, stood at 20.1 percent during the period, down 0.8 percentage points over the first quarter of the year.

Retail sales, a key indicator of consumer spending, increased 12.7 percent from a year earlier. The growth rate picked up by 0.3 percentage points from the January-March period, according to the NBS.