Issue No.2, 2018 (Total 98)

2018-4-30

In March, China’s economy maintained a steady performance across the board, with some economic indicators showed a minimum downturn. The industrial added value increased by 6% year on year, down by 1.2 percentage points compared with February. The growth rate of industrial electricity consumption and railway freight transportation dropped significantly. Compared with the previous month, investment growth decreased by 0.4 percentage points and exports slowed down sharply. At the same time, the total retail sales of social consumer goods steadily increased, and the growth of private investment continued to improve. The real estate inventory level continued to decline, and the housing price turned stable. Deleveraging continued to move in a positive direction. Generally speaking, the RMB exchange rate and foreign exchange reserves maintained stable. The overall performance of prices was smooth, with the CPI growth and PPI growth both declined. On the whole, China’s economy continued to maintain the momentum of a stable performance in the first quarter. But some problems should also be noted. For instance, the external uncertainties further increased, trade disputes provoked by the US affected market expectations, and concerns about the export growth loomed up; the growth rate of infrastructure investment dropped prominently, the real estate sales continued to fall, the growth rate of real estate investment slowed down, and the downward factors of investment growth increased; local state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are in heavy debts and some local governments have great financial difficulties. In the following months, work should be done to continue to insist on seeking progress while maintaining stable performance, keep strategic focus, stick to taking the supply-side structural reform as the mainline in accordance with the requirements for high quality development, further advance reform and opening up, strengthen policy coordination and expectation guidance and combine accelerating the adjustment of structure with expanding domestic demand. In addition, we need to maintain a bottom-line thinking, properly deal with China-US trade frictions with prepared countermeasures and maintain a stable development of China’s economy.