China's industrial output growth held steady in January and February, official data showed today, providing further evidence of stability in the world's second-largest economy despite slower retail sales growth.
Industrial output rose 6.3 per cent year-on-year in the first two months of 2017, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, slightly beating the 6.2 forecast in a Bloomberg News survey.
Retails sales, a key indicator of consumer spending, increased 9.5 per cent over the period, down from 10.2 percent in the same period last year. Sales grew 10.9 percent in December.
Fixed-asset investment, a gauge of infrastructure spending, rose 8.9 per cent year-on-year in January-February.
Most data are "quite positive" and "apparently improving," NBS spokesman Sheng Laiyuan said in a news briefing, adding that production and demand have slightly picked up.
"China's economy is opening the year with a good start, although pro-growth policies to shore up consumption in coming months are needed," Gao Yuwei, a researcher at the Bank of China Ltd.'s Institute of International Finance, told Bloomberg.
Premier Li Keqiang announced a 2017 official economic growth target of "around 6.5 percent, or higher if possible" in a government work report delivered to the National People's Congress on March 5, citing even "more complicated and graver situations" facing China this year.
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