Issue No.3, 2018 (Total 99)

2018-5-30

In April, China’s economy maintained a stable performance across the board, but the main economic indicators showed a wide divergence. The industrial added value increased by 7% year on year, up by 1 percentage point compared with March. The growth rate of industrial electricity consumption increased prominently. The year-on-year growth of export (in US dollar) improved by 15.6 percentage points compared with March. The growth of private investment continued to maintain a relative high speed and that of the investment in the manufacturing industry inched up. However, compared with the previous month, the overall investment growth slowed down by 0.5 percentage points and the total retail sales of consumer goods fell by 0.7 percentage points. CPI growth continued to fall back while PPI growth stopped decreasing. The general performance of price was moderate. As the effect of strict supervision and deleveraging became enhanced, the total amount of social financing and credit funds improved steadily, and the RMB exchange rate maintained stable. It must be noted that the comprehensive effect spawned by financial deleveraging, the reduction of SOEs’ debt, the strict regulation on local governments’ financing and the enforced control on real estate industry has been further unleashed. The growth rate of infrastructure investment slowed down, the number of unsold homes continued to decline and the growth rate of real estate investment slowed down. The downward factors of investment growth increased and the growth rate of domestic demand faced downturn pressure. In view of the big picture, China’s economic operation will witness downward performance to some extent. We need to follow the general principle of seeking progress while maintaining a stable performance, promote our work according to the requirements for high quality development, make more efforts to deepen the supply-side structural reform and pay attention to policy coordination between different departments in line with projected targets. We need to formulate policies and measures from a strategic perspective to expand the domestic demand effectively, accelerate reform and opening up and enable China’s economy to embark on a high-quality development track step by step.