Apr 13, 2012
By Pang Lei

China's gross domestic product (GDP) registered a year-on-year increase of 8.1 percent, reaching 10.79 trillion yuan (approximately 1.7 trillion US dollars) in the first quarter of 2012, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced earlier this morning.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast annual growth of 8.3 percent for the first quarter

The growth rate was 0.8 percentage points lower than the rate of growth registered in the final quarter of 2011, according to Sheng Laiyun, the spokesman for the NBS, who read the bureau's report on the economic figures for the first quarter at an official press conference in Beijing.

The NBS announcement follows the release of the World Bank's China Quarterly Update yesterday in which the global institution lowered its forecast for China's economic growth rate in 2012 to 8.2 percent from the 8.4 percent estimate issued in January.

China's GDP grew 8.9 percent in the final quarter of last year and 9.1 percent in the third quarter of 2011. The rate of growth in the first quarter of 2012 is the lowest since the country's GDP grew by 7.9 percent in the second quarter of 2009.

Earlier this year, the government set its annual economic growth target for 2012 at 7.5 percent.

The NBS also revealed data on the country's industrial output, investment, consumption and trade.

China's industrial value-added output was up 11.6 percent in the first quarter, when compared to the same period last year, a 2.3 percentage point decrease on the pace of growth registered over the course of last year.

The profits of large-scale industrial enterprises shrank by 5.2 percent from a year earlier to reach 606 billion yuan over the first two months of the year, the bureau did not publish figures for industrial profits over the first quarter.

Over the first 3 months of the year, China's fixed-asset investment rose 20.9 percent from a year earlier (or 18.2 percent if you take price factors into account) to reach 4.78 trillion yuan.

Investment in real estate climbed 23.5 percent in the first quarter (or 20.7 percent if you take price factors into account), reaching a total of 1.09 trillion yuan, 4.4 percentage points lower than the rate of growth recorded over the course of 2011.

Earlier this week, China's statistics bureau also released updated numbers for the country's consumer price index (CPI).

The index rose 3.6 percent year-on-year in February, a slight increase on the pace of growth registered in February, when the index rose by 3.2 percent compared to 12 months earlier.

The statistics agency also announced that the CPI had increased by 3.8 percent over the first 3 months of the year.

The producer price index (PPI), another measure of inflation at the wholesale level, fell 0.3 percent in March year-on-year, the first time the indicator has seen negative year-on-year growth since December 2009.

In the first quarter of this year, the PPI climbed 0.1 percent, compared to the first three months of 2011.

Links and Sources
National Bureau of Statistics: 一季度国民经济运行总体平稳
National Bureau of Statistics: 2012年3月份消费品市场情况
National Bureau of Statistics: 2012年1-3月份全国房地产开发和销售情况
National Bureau of Statistics: 2012年1-3月份固定资产投资主要情况
National Bureau of Statistics: 2012年3月份规模以上工业生产运行情况