Economic Indicators for October: China's Economy Continues to Strengthen

The release of major economic indicators by the country's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the People's Bank of China (PBoC) on Wednesday morning, revealed that China's economy is continuing to display signs of strengthening growth.

Wednesday's report revealed that economic growth, which has surged in response to a huge influx of investment released as part of the government's sweeping stimulus plan, had strengthened. China's industrial output rose 16.1 percent in October from a year earlier. This increase was 2.2 percentage points higher than September's figure and 7.9 percentage points higher than the pace of growth over the same period last year.

The bureau also said that China's urban fixed-asset investment continued to maintain strong growth momentum. Over the first ten months, urban fixed-asset investment rose 33.1% from a year earlier to 15.07 trillion yuan (2.2 trillion US dollars). The figure is 5.9 percentage points higher than last year's corresponding period.

Of that figure, investment in real estate reached 2.84 trillion yuan (415.9 billion US dollars), 18.9 percent higher than that achieved in the same period last year.

In addition, consumption continued to strengthen. Total retail sales of consumer goods in October grew 16.2 percent from a year earlier to 1.17 trillion yuan (170.7 billion US dollars). The increase was 5.8 percentage points lower than that in the same period last year, but 0.7 percentage points higher than the figure for September this year.

In the first eight months of this year, sales of consumer goods totaled 10.13 trillion yuan (1.48 trillion US dollars).

Fears of rising inflation meant that economists and the media paid close attention to the October Consumer Price Index (CPI). The headline inflation indicator registered a year-on-year decline of 0.5 percent in October. The producer price index (PPI), an inflation gauge at the wholesale level, dropped 5.8 percent from a year earlier.

China's central bank new lending figures for October were also released this morning.