Chinas annual industrial output was likely to rise 11 per cent in 1998, ensuring economic growth reaches an 8.0 target, a senior government official was quoted on Friday as saying.
The growth of industrial output will have to be more than 11 percent this year to ensure gross domestic product grows by 8.0 percent, Sheng Huaren, newly appointed head of the State Economic and Trade Commission, told the official Economic Daily.
As long as we do our best work, we are confident of meeting the industrial output growth target, Sheng said.
Chinas value-added industrial output rose 8.2 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 1998, against 11.1 percent in the whole of 1997, the State Statistical Bureau said on Friday.
Industrial output rose a year-on-year 9.0 percent in March.
Speaking to French business leaders early this week, Premier Zhu Rongji said Chinas economy expanded by 7.5 percent in the first quarter, falling short of the 8.0 percent growth target.
To meet the target, China must take measures to tap its vast consumer markets in rural areas and strive to boost the competitivess of industrial products to expand overseas sales, Sheng said in the Economic Daily interview.
Chinas total value of delivered exports of industrial products rose 7.7 percent year-on-year, the State Statistical Bureau said on Friday.
The growth of industrial output will gradually increase as state policies aimed at expanding domestic demand start to take effect, the bureau said in a statement.
Separately, the China Economic Times quoted Sheng as predicting industrial output would rise 11 percent in the second quarter of this year and around 12 percent in both the third and fourth quarters.
Beijing, bracing for slowing exports due to financial turmoil in Asia, has pledged to invest up to $1 trillion in the next three years on infrastructure and other sectors to stimulate growth.
To free up funds for bank lending, the central bank last month slashed the bank reserve ratio from 18-20 percent to eight percent. Bank lending rates were cut by an average 0.6 percentage point.
Stimulating polices will take some time to take effect, said an economist at the China Economic Research Centre of the Beijing University.
Government policies are expected to have an impact on the economy in the second half of this year, he said. I expect money supply to increase and provide stimulus for the economy, he said.
On Friday Jean-Michel Severino, the World Bank vice president for East Asia and the Pacific region, told a news conference in Beijing that if the government wants to achieve its 8.0 percent growth target this year its very wise to boost zzthe economy.
We think there is still a good chance that the 8.0 percent target can be met, Severino said.
