Growth efforts focus on five sectors ( 2003-08-15 06:43) (China Daily)
The Chinese Government will focus on five specific sectors to maintain
economic growth, a senior official said Thursday.
Tens of
thousands Shanghai residents are attracted to a housing exhibition opened
at Shanghai Exhibition Centre on July 25, 2003. Demand in the housing
market sees rapid rebound after SARS.
[newsphoto.com.cn]
The sectors are housing, cars, information technology, healthcare and
education, which have increasingly made up the lion's share of Chinese people's
consumption.
Zheng Xinli, deputy director of the Policy Research Centre affiliated to the
Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, told an international seminar
on real estate and construction held in Beijing Thursday: "Based on China's
current economic development pattern, we have decided the guiding policy.''
China's gross domestic product (GDP) increased 8.2 per cent year on year in
the first half of this year, overcoming the shadow of SARS (severe acute
respiratory syndrome) that plagued the economy in the spring.
Fixed-asset investment in the first half of this year soared 31.1 per cent
year on year. The balance of bank loans increased by 22.9 per cent, the highest
growth rate since 1996.
However, consumption grew by just 9 per cent compared with the same period of
last year.
"The growth imbalance is likely to expand the continuous oversupply of some
products on the market,'' said Zheng.
Official statistics indicate that about 85 per cent of 500 everyday
commodities on the Chinese market are oversupplied and no commodity falls short
of demand.
Urgent measures needed to tap the potential of domestic consumption are to
fatten the wallets of farmers and create more jobs, said Zheng.
"Decreases in farmers' income and unemployment in cities are two urgent
problems facing the government,'' he said.
Last Saturday, the State Council urged local governments to do more to
increase farmers' income and help them survive the fallout from the outbreak of
SARS as well as other natural disasters.
A nationwide survey by the National Bureau of Statistics showed that farmers'
per capita cash income grew by a meagre 3.2 per cent year on year in the first
half of this year, down 3.4 percentage points on an inflation-adjusted basis.
Meanwhile, the per capita disposable income of city dwellers increased by 9 per
cent to 4,301 yuan (US$520).
Worse, in the second quarter when the SARS epidemic peaked, rural people
actually earned on average only 421 yuan (US$50.90) in cash, 11 yuan (US$1.30)
less than during the same period the previous year. The contraction of farmers'
cash income could foil the government's efforts to narrow the already huge gap
between urban and rural areas.
Visitors look
at a car at an automobile exhibition in Beijing. The number
of registered automobiles in the Chinese capital topped 2 million,
including 1.28 million private ones, according to the latest figure.
[newsphoto.com.cn]
Non-agricultural income has become a major source of growth in farmers'
income in recent years. But the SARS outbreak deprived many rural migrant
workers of their jobs in the cities during the second quarter.
Mindful of this problem, the government reiterated the importance of creating
non-farming job opportunities for rural migrants in late June, when the country
was bringing the SARS epidemic under control.
In the cities, the registered jobless rate climbed to 4.2 per cent, 0.2
percentage points higher than the rate at the end of last year.
To tackle the problem, the State Council has planned a high-level national
conference scheduled to be held today in a bid to create more jobs.
Data from the Macroeconomics Research Institute under the National
Development and Reform Commission show that China's GDP is expected to reach 1.1
trillion yuan (US$144 billion) this year, for an estimated growth rate of just
over 8 per cent.
Chen Dongqi, the institute's vice-president, said: "China has returned to the
fast track of economic development.''
He said he believed that China's new round of economic growth would not be
held back by the effects of the SARS outbreak in April and May or the droughts
and floods that have affected many regions of the country this summer.
He forecast that China's economy will increase by 7.5 per cent year on year
in the third quarter of this year and by 8 per cent in the fourth quarter.
In the first quarter, the country's economy rose by 9.9 per cent year on
year, which was the highest growth rate since 1997. But the growth rate fell to
6.5 per cent during the second quarter due to SARS.
