China's economy hit its slowest pace of growth in a year in the third quarter, hurt by power shortages, supply chain bottlenecks and major wobbles in the property market and raising pressure on policymakers to do more to prop up the faltering recovery. Data released on Monday showed gross domestic product (GDP) grew 4.9% in July-September from a year earlier, the weakest clip since the third quarter of 2020.
 
China's economy had staged an impressive rebound from last year's pandemic slump thanks to effective virus containment and hot overseas demand for the country's manufactured goods. But the recovery has lost steam from the blistering 18.3% growth clocked in the first quarter of this year.
 
A Reuters poll of analysts had expected GDP to rise 5.2% in the third quarter.
 
Global worries about a possible spillover of credit risk from China's property sector into the wider economy have also intensified as major developer China Evergrande Group wrestles with more than $300 billion of debt.
 
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New construction starts in September slumped for a sixth straight month, NBS data showed, the longest spate of monthly declines since 2015. Meanwhile, the industrial sector has been hit by power rationing triggered by coal shortages, as well as environmental curbs on heavy polluters like steel plants and floods over the summer.
 
Overall industrial output rose just 3.1% in September from a year earlier, marking the slowest growth since March 2020, during the first wave of the pandemic. Aluminium output declined for the fifth consecutive month and daily crude steel output hit the lowest level since 2018.
 
Bucking the negative trend, retail sales grew 4.4%, faster than forecasts and the 2.5% growth in August, and the surveyed nationwide jobless rate fell from 5.1% to 4.9%.
 

Source : Reuters
Post by : Republic of Turkey Ministry of Trade