CHINA’S IN Q2: PREVISIONS

CHINA SECOND QUARTER GDP GROWTH SEEN AT 7.5 PERCENT: GOVERNMENT THINK-TANK

Reuters, May 18, 2012

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's annual economic growth could slow to 7.5 percent in the second quarter, largely due to curbs on the property sector and headwinds from external demand, the State Information Center, a government think-tank, said in a report published on Friday.

If the GDP forecast is accurate, growth in the second three months of 2012 would be the slowest since the first quarter of 2009, when the global economy was in the grip of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The forecast is in line with the government's official 2012 growth target of 7.5 percent which was set in March.

But a fall below 8 percent would worry many investors who regard that rate of growth as the minimum needed to ensure sufficient job creation for China's hundreds of millions of mainly poorly paid rural migrant workers.

The consensus estimate in the latest benchmark Reuters poll shows that private sector economists expect China's growth to ease to 7.9 percent in Q2 from an 8.1 percent annual rate in Q1. They forecast full year growth of 8.2 percent.

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