CHINA GROWTH ON "TARGET"

China growth `on target'

Tuesday, September 08, 2015

China's power usage, rail freight and property market have all shown improvement since August, indicating the economy is stabilizing, the top planning agency said.
The effects of supportive policies, including interest rate cuts, property market stimulus and local government debt swaps, will feed into the economy over the next few months and help underpin growth, the National Development and Reform Commission said yesterday.
The commission has given the green light to 77 billion yuan (HK$93.74 billion) worth of highway and bridge projects the latest in a spate of such approvals, as Beijing looks to infrastructure to support economic growth. The projects include a feasibility study for a 23.3 billion yuan highway in southwestern Guizhou, and a 7.3 billion yuan bridge project in central Hubei.
"The economy is expected to maintain steady growth, and we are able to achieve annual economic growth target," the commission said.A flurry of recent soft indicators and a collapse in China's stock markets had heightened fears of a hard landing for the world's second-biggest economy, sending global financial markets into a tailspin.
China's economy, which grew 7 percent in the first half from a year earlier, in line with the government's target for the year, is headed for its slowest economic expansion in 25 years in 2015.
But the recent downbeat data has raised the risk the government could miss the full-year growth target.
The National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday that it had revised economic growth in 2014 to 7.3 percent from the previously released figure of 7.4 percent.
The NDRC cited data from the State Grid as saying total power consumption in August rose 2.47 percent on the year the fastest growth so far this year and steady growth was likely to continue in September.
REUTERS