China’s Top Leaders Vow to Meet Growth Targets Despite Virus
China’s Top Leaders Vow to Meet Economic Targets Despite Virus
(Bloomberg) -- The Chinese Communist Party’s top decision body urged the nation to meet its economic targets this year even amid the downward pressure from the coronavirus shutdowns.
The goals will be met by keeping the prudent monetary policy flexible and appropriate, making greater use of fiscal policy, boosting domestic consumption, and promoting large foreign-investment projects, top leaders concluded at the Standing Committee of the Politburo meeting, according to reports by state media late Wednesday.
Measures against the virus have had a “positive effect,” according to the statement following the meeting led by President Xi Jinping. While Xi has been talking up the resilience of the economy amid the near-halt of manufacturing in some cities including Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, economists have been downgrading their forecasts for this year.
Economic targets for the year are usually published after the meeting of the National People’s Congress in March. It’s not year clear if that gathering will go ahead as planned this year, though analysts predicted before the virus outbreak that the goal for gross domestic product growth would be set at “about 6%,” acknowledging the economic slowdown.
The consensus estimate among economists surveyed by Bloomberg is for a 5.8% expansion this year, down from 5.9% last month.
The meeting urged officials to “prioritize the investment of special bonds by local governments, make good use of investments within the central government budget, boost the interest of private investments and speed up the construction of major projects,” according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.
Additionally, “the government should promote the implementation of large foreign investment projects, implement foreign investment laws and supporting regulations, improve the foreign investment environment, and protect the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investment,” according to the statement.
What Bloomberg’s Economists Say..
“This is the first time that high-level leaders explicitly expressed intentions to stimulate economic activity since the outbreak of the virus. In our view, this indicates that the authorities are tying more importance to economic development, though fighting the virus remains the priority.”
-- David Qu, Bloomberg Economics
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--With assistance from Jacob Gu.
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Ye Xie in New York at yxie6@bloomberg.net;Winnie Zhu in Shanghai at wzhu4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeffrey Black at jblack25@bloomberg.net, James Mayger
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