China's GDP Up 7.7% in First Three Quarters

Thursday's announcement that China's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 8.9% in the third quarter, bolstered confidence that the Chinese economy has consolidated its recovery and is emerging from the economic downturn.

The quarterly GDP growth of 8.9% was an increase on the 6.1% registered in the first quarter and the 7.9% achieved in the second and was announced amid a host of other positive economic data and was preceded by a State Council announcement that, for the first time, declared the "consolidation" of the recovery.

According to the third quarter statistics released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Thursday morning, the GDP of the first three quarters of 2009 reached 21,781.7 billion yuan, up 7.7% on the same period last year.

Economists are now even more confident that China will achieve its GDP growth target of 8% in 2009, some have even upped their forecasts of annual GDP growth for the year to over 9%.

The report also include the latest export figures, noting that although foreign trade continued to decline, the pace of the decrease had declined.

The total value of imports and exports was 1,557.8 billion US dollars, down 20.9% year-on-year. Of this total, the value of imports and exports in the first quarter was down 24.9%, the second quarter was down 22.1%, and the third quarter down by 16.5%. In the first three quarters of this year, the value of exports was 846.6 billion US dollars, down by 21.3%.

Fixed Assets Investment (FAI) posted rapid growth with a jump of 33.4% in the first three quarters compared with the same period last year. At the same time, retail sales of consumer goods was over 8.96 trillion yuan in the first three quarters, up 17%, after adjusting for inflation, compared with last year's figure.

Meanwhile, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and the retail price of consumer goods fell by 1.1% and 1.6% on a year-on-year basis.

The report also noted that money supply grew rapidly with a continued increase in new loans issued by financial institutions.

"By the end of September, the supply of broad money (M2) was 58.5 trillion yuan, a year-on-year growth of 29.3 percent, which was 11.5 percentage points higher than that at the end of last year; that of the narrow money (M1) was 20.2 trillion yuan, a rise of 29.5 percent, or 20.5 percentage points higher; the cash in circulation (M0) was 3,678.8 billion yuan, up by 16.0 percent, or 3.3 percentage points higher. The amount of outstanding loans of all financial institutions was 39.0 trillion yuan, increased by 8.7 trillion yuan over that at the beginning of this year, or an increase of 5.2 trillion yuan as compared with the same period last year."

Links and Sources
National Bureau of Statistics: Announcement (Chinese and English)
National Bureau of Statistics: Main Statistical Data (English) 
China.org.cn: image