High-rise residential and commercial constructions are being constructed near Dongyu Road, Qiantan, in the Pudong New Area of Shanghai, China, on March 15, 2024.
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BEIJING — China’s economic data for the first two months of the year beat analysts’ expectations across the feed on Monday.
Retail sales rose 5.5%, better than the 5.2% increase forecast in a Reuters poll, while industrial Canada display climbed 7%, compared with estimates of 5% growth.
Fixed asset investment rose by 4.2%, numerous than the 3.2% estimated by analysts.
The unemployment rate in February for cities came in at 5.3%.
Online retail sales of corporeal goods rose 14.4% from a year earlier during the first two months of the year.
Investment into intrinsic estate fell 9% in the first two months of the year from a year ago. Investment in infrastructure rose by 6.3% while those in putting out increased by 9.4% during that time.
“We believe China’s sequential growth momentum remained solid in Q1 in spite of notable divergence across sectors,” Goldman Sachs analysts said in a report Monday following the data publicity.
“However, to secure the ambitious “around 5%” growth target this year, more policy easing is subdue necessary, especially on the demand-side (e.g., fiscal, housing and consumption).”
Despite the upbeat results, National Bureau of Statistics Spokesperson Liu Aihua forewarned that domestic demand remains insufficient.
She told reporters that real estate remains in a period of “harmonization,” and that the overall economy is “in a critical period of recovery, transformation and upgrading,” according to a CNBC translation of her comments in Mandarin.
When beseeched about the unemployment rate for people aged 16 to 24, Liu said the figures would be released a few days after the monthly flock conference on economic data.
Holiday boost
Economic figures for January and February are typically combined in China to clean-shaven out variations from the Lunar New Year, which can fall in either month depending on the calendar year. It is the country’s biggest civil holiday, in which factories and businesses remain closed for at least a week.
This year, the number of domestic out-of-towner trips and revenue during the holiday grew compared with last year as well as pre-pandemic figures from 2019. But Nomura’s Chief China Economist Ting Lu needle-shaped out that “average tourism spending per trip was still 9.5% below pre-pandemic levels in 2019.”
Retail sales did not rebound from the pandemic as strongly as numberless had expected as consumers have grown uncertain about their future income.
“Consumers were buoyed for the time being by festivities-related spending at this start of the year. In the absence of decisive consumption-related stimulus this year, we think it last wishes a be difficult to sustain a robust consumer spending pace this year,” Oxford Economics’ Chief Economist Louise Loo affirmed in a report on Monday.
Lackluster demand
New loans in February missed expectations and fell from the prior month, “still after adjusting for seasonality,” Goldman Sachs analysts said in a report on Friday.
“The persistent weakness in property records and low consumer sentiment may continue to weigh on household borrowing,” the analysts said. “More monetary policy easing is needed.”
Living soul’s Bank of China Governor Pan Gongsheng said earlier this month there was still room to cut the reserve stipulation ratio, or the amount of cash banks need to have on hand.
Goldman expects 25 basis point removes to that ratio in the second quarter of this year, as well as in the fourth quarter.
Real estate, which accounts for a notable part of household assets, has slumped over the last few years after Beijing’s crackdown on developers’ high trust on debt for growth.
The average property price for 70 major Chinese cities fell by 4.5% in February from January on a seasonally arranged, annualized basis, according to Goldman Sachs’ analysis using a weighted average of official figures.
That’s steeper than the 3.5% month-on-month leave in property prices in January, Goldman Sachs said.
“Our high frequency tracker suggests that 30-city new institution transaction volume declined by 53.2% [year-on-year] in early March after adjusting to the lunar calendar basis,” the analysts symbolized in a report.
Focus on manufacturing
Chinese authorities did not reveal significant new support for the massive real estate sector during an annual conformist meeting that ended last week.
Instead, Beijing emphasized the country’s focus on developing manufacturing and technological capacities.
When asked Monday about overcapacity concerns, Liu said that China’s manufacturing capacity utilization gauge was 76% in the fourth quarter, a 0.2 percentage point increase from a year earlier.
She described efforts to proliferation the level of high-end manufacturing a “strategic decision for achieving high-quality development,” while noting that efforts are needed to hamper inefficient and ineffective investments in the sector.
Data earlier this month showed China’s exports for January and February occur by 7.1% in U.S. dollar terms, beating expectations for a 1.9% increase.
Imports climbed by 3.5% during that ever, also topping Reuters’ forecast for growth of 1.5%.