China Risks Missing 8% Growth Target, Two Top Officials Say
- By Li Yanping and Philip Lagerkranser
Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) -- China’s economic growth may fall short of the government’s 8 percent target for creating jobs and preventing social unrest in the world’s most populous nation, two top officials said today.
Meeting the target will be “exceptionally arduous,” Liu Mingkang, the chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, said in Beijing. There are downside risks to the goal, central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan said separately in Basel, Switzerland.
Premier Wen Jiabao pledged yesterday to announce extra stimulus measures before the legislature meets in March, to add to a 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) growth package. Waning export demand has led to protests by fired employees, an exodus of 600,000 migrant workers from the manufacturing hub of Guangdong, and an estimated urban unemployment rate of more than 9 percent.
“It’s the first official acknowledgement that even the modest 8 percent growth target may not be achievable in 2009,” said Glenn Maguire, chief Asia-Pacific economist at Societe Generale SA in Hong Kong. “The flip side is that we are likely to see a more aggressive policy response in coming months.”
China’s growth may slow to 5 percent this year, less than half of the 11.9 percent expansion in 2007, according to Royal Bank of Scotland Plc. That would be the weakest pace since 1990 and the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
more: bloomberg.com |
