China's economy shows steady growth in August
China’s economy showed steady growth in August with consumer industries growing at a faster pace.
Industrial output expanded 6.1 percent year on year in August, 0.1 percentage points faster than July, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed on Friday.
The mining industry posted 2 percent year-on-year growth in value-added output; manufacturing rose 6.1 percent; and the electricity, heat, gas and water production and supply industries advanced by 9.9 percent.
For the period from January to August, output of the high-technology industry, the equipment manufacturing industry and the strategic emerging industry grew 11.9 percent, 8.8 percent and 8.8 percent from a year earlier, respectively, 5.4 percentage points, 2.3 percentage points and 2.3 percentage points faster than the overall industrial output growth, indicating optimization of the industrial structure.
"China's industrial development continues to head towards the mid to high end," the bureau said.
The service sector expanded 7.5 percent year on year in August, falling 0.1 percentage points from the previous month.
The information transmission, software and information technology services industries, and the leasing and business services industries increased by 38.8 percent and 9.8 percent respectively year on year.
Meanwhile, the modern service sector maintained momentum, according to the bureau. The business revenue of the strategic emerging service industry, the technology service industry and the high-tech service industry increased by 16.4 percent, 16.1 percent and 14.5 percent, respectively.
Infrastructure investment, however, slowed further in August, dragging fixed asset investment growth lower. "This indicates a still murky outlook in the third quarter," the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group said.
The FAI in the period from January to August fell to 5.3 percent year on year, compared with 5.5 percent for January to July. Infrastructure investment growth softened to 4.2 percent in the January to August period from 5.7 percent in the first seven months, marking a historical low. Property investment growth slowed to 9.3 percent year on year in August from 13.2 percent in July.
"The slow approval process for infrastructure projects could be partly responsible, although the government has become more clearly supportive of investment since late July," Betty Wang, senior China economist at ANZ Group said.
Mao Shengyong, spokeswoman for the bureau, expected the FAI to be more steady as the government aims to make solid progress in pushing forward supply-side structural reform.
The consumer goods market continued to maintain a market size of more than 3 trillion yuan (US$438 billion) in a single month in August. Retail sales posted a small rebound to grow by a stronger-than-expected 9 percent year on year, 0.2 percentage points higher than that of July.
Among property-related industries, sales growth of home-use electronic products and construction and decoration materials rose by 4.2 percentage points and 2.5 percentage points, respectively, to 4.8 percent and 7.9 percent year on year in August, while that of furniture sales fell by 1.6 percentage points to 9.5 percent.
"But note, despite an improvement in July that was mainly driven by the import tariff cuts on autos, auto sales resumed moderation in August, softening by 1.2 percent points to negative 3.2 percent year on year," Lu Ting, chief China economist of Nomura International said.
"Given already high household debt and a subdued income growth outlook due to slowing growth and strengthening tax collection, we remain relatively pessimistic on the consumption outlook," Lu said.