Thursday 9 August 2012

MORE SLOWDOWN IN CHINA

The New York Times OK

GROWTH FLAGGING IN CHINA, GOVERNMENT DATA SHOW

Bettina Wassener

The New York Times, August 9, 2012

HONG KONG — Hopes dimmed for a pickup in China, the world’s growth engine, as a batch of disappointing economic data on Thursday showed industrial production and retail sales falling well short of expectations in July.

Industrial output, a key measure of how healthy the China’s giant manufacturing sector is, grew 9.2 percent from a year earlier, far below the 9.8 percent that analysts polled by Reuters had expected. The figure also marked a slowdown from the 9.5 percent seen in June.

Retail sales, which give an indication of domestic demand, grew 13.1 percent in July. Economists had expected the figure to remain at the 13.7 percent level recorded in June.

Finally, investment in fixed assets — items like equipment and property that are expected to be held for long periods of time and cannot easily be converted to cash — expanded 20.4 percent in the first seven months of the year, about the same as in the January-June period, disappointing hopes for a more marked pickup that could help lift the overall economy.

The Chinese economy has been stumbling for months, stung by weak overseas demand for its exports and by the lingering effect of Beijing’s efforts last year to rein in inflation.

The authorities have been reversing many of those measures this year, raising hopes that the economy may have put the worst behind it during the past few months.

The weak data for July, however, appeared to indicate that Beijing needed to step up its stimulus efforts for the recovery to take root.

(...) [artículo aquí]

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