The Chinese economy will continue to grow rapidly in the
remaining months of the year despite difficulties with excessive
lending and an increasing trade imbalance, according to one the
country's top statisticians.
While addressing the ongoing annual meeting of the Chinese
Economists Society (CES) held in Shanghai, Qiu Xiaohua, director of
the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), said the country
maintained double-digit growth in the added-value output of the
industrial sector, investments, sales of consumer goods and foreign
trade from January to May.
But Qiu cited huge bank loans as a worrying underlying problem
and pointed out that behind the fast growth rate of 30.3 percent in
investments during the first five months of the year the total
amount of loans granted stood at 1.78 trillion yuan--equivalent to
71 percent of the year's loan quota.
By late May the country's trade surplus had shot up to US$64.8
billion --US$16.8 billion more than for the same period last year.
Its foreign exchange reserve surpassed US$900 billion making the
imbalance of payments position worse.
In addition prices of manufactured goods and raw materials and
of farm produce and necessities such as fertilizer made it
very difficult for these industries to improve their incomes.
Despite these issues the country's revenue increased by 500
billion yuan (about US$61.65 billion) in the first five months of
the year--an annual rise of 22.8 percent. The income of urban
residents also increased by more than 10 percent.
The profits of industrial enterprises increased by 25 percent
nationwide in the first five months of the year, noted Qiu. He
added that 80 percent of the profits were concentrated in five
major businesses ranging from petroleum, power, coal to non-ferrous
metals with the remaining 20 percent being shared by enterprises
engaged in more than 30 industry sectors.
The CES is a non-profit academic organization founded in 1985 in
New York. They aim to promote market-based economic reforms and
open-door policies in China, to expand academic exchanges between
China and the rest of the world and to engage in scholarly studies
of the country's economy.
(Xinhua News Agency July 4, 2006)