Chinese research group expects 9.5% economic growth in China next year at 18:32 on November 13, 2006, EST.
BEIJING (AP) - China's economy is likely to maintain its rapid pace of growth next year, with gross domestic product expanding at 9.5 per cent as authorities continue to tighten monetary policy and slowly push up the value of the yuan, a government research group said Monday.
China's economic growth, which set a 10.7 per cent pace over the January-September period, has forced Beijing to take a variety of measures to cool the economy and ward off overheating from excess liquidity and high investment.
Beijing should continue to use a variety of tools to drain excess liquidity next year, the State Information Center said in a report published Monday in the China Securities Journal.
The information centre said it also expects the gap between the growth of China's exports and imports to shrink next year. Exports are likely to grow by 15 per cent and imports by 14 per cent, it said. In the first 10 months of this year, exports grew 26.8 per cent while imports rose by 20.9 per cent.
The research group said China will continue to let the value of the yuan increase, but it didn't give a specific target or estimate.
It said China should take steps to diversify its foreign exchange reserves by "appropriately" increasing investment in strategic reserves of natural resources such as crude oil and metals.
China's economy has been surging in recent years as the country becomes a growing manufacturing power, attracting companies from Asia, Europe and North America who want to set up factories using low-cost Chinese labour to produce electronics, toys, industrial and other goods for shipment to Japan, other parts of Asia and the West.
Chinese growth has also led to rising demand for resources such as nickel, copper, zinc and oil and gas to fuel its industrial expansion. That has led to a sharp jump in commodities prices, which has benefited Canadian miners and oil and gas producers.
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