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China is unexpectedly silent on economic data
10/17/2022, 12:11 p.m
The second-largest economy will not publish any data on economic development during the important congress of the ruling CP. The responsible authorities do not give any reasons. According to estimates, the country is heading for its weakest growth in almost half a century.
China is surprisingly postponing the release of important data on economic development. This also includes the assessment of gross domestic product in the third quarter scheduled for tomorrow, Tuesday, during the party congress of the Communist Party, as the statistics office announced. Data on industrial production, retail sales and the unemployment rate are also affected by the shift. An explanation for the delays was initially not given.
Already on Friday, the customs authority had not published the statistics on foreign trade in September as planned, without explaining this decision. Questions as to when the dates will now be announced remained unanswered.
On the fringes of the party congress, leading politicians expressed optimism regarding the economic trend in the past summer quarter. “The economy recovered noticeably in the third quarter,” Zhao Chenxin, vice president of the National Development and Reform Commission, said at a press conference marking the five-year Communist Party Congress.
Growth weaker than it has been for half a century?
“Consumer prices have risen slightly, in contrast to high global inflation, and employment has generally remained stable.” However, Zhao acknowledged that there are still headwinds for the world’s second largest economy following the US.
The Chinese economy is expected to have grown 3.4 percent year-on-year from July to September, following expanding just 0.4 percent in the second quarter. But the expected growth for 2022 might still be one of the weakest in almost half a century, a survey of economists has found. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently reduced its forecasts for the People’s Republic and now expects growth rates of 3.2 and 4.4 percent for 2022 and 2023.
