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China's industrial output slows sharply in October: govt
AFP - 56 minutes ago
BEIJING (AFP) - - China's factory output abruptly weakened last month, the government said Thursday, as Premier Wen Jiabao warned the impact of the global crisis was "much worse" than expected.
Industrial production grew 8.2 percent in October from the corresponding month a year ago compared with 11.4 percent in September, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement.
"It's a very low figure. Everyone had expected China's economy would slow down, but not so sharply. People had still thought it would be double-digit growth," said Benny Lui, a Hong Kong-based economist at Core Pacific Yamaichi.
"This slow growth in industrial output indicates the risk of a hard landing is still lingering," he said.
Several key product categories last month either grew by single digits or declined compared with a year earlier, statistics from the bureau showed.
For example, China produced 730,000 vehicles in October, a drop of 0.7 percent from a year earlier, while production of crude steel was down 17.0 percent over the same period, the bureau said.
As the industrial figures came out, the statistics bureau's newspaper quoted Premier Wen as making one of the most sombre assessments yet of the effect of the global financial meltdown on the world's fourth-largest economy.
"The impact of the global financial crisis on the Chinese economy is much worse than many had expected," the bureau's director, Ma Jiantang, quoted Wen as saying in the China Information News.
Exports of industrial products were up by just 6.8 percent from October 2007, reflecting the slowdown in key markets such as the United States and Europe.
China's policy makers began the year worrying if they would be able to rein in inflation, while economic growth was a decidedly secondary objective, but have signalled now that they have switched their priorities around.
October's industrial output showed just how much has changed in the economic environment since the outbreak of the global crisis, with growth less than half the 17.9 percent recorded in October 2007, from a year earlier.
The upshot is likely to be economic growth in China of between nine and ten percent this year, the first time since 2002 that it will have slipped into single digits, analysts said.
The drastic deceleration in industrial production suggests the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis -- the last major foreign crisis facing the Chinese economy -- may no longer be a suitable point of reference.
"This was a larger and sharper fall-off than during the Asian financial crisis a decade ago," said Ken Peng, a Citibank economist based in Shanghai.
China's initial stance was that the global financial crisis would not cause too much harm to its economy, but in recent days policies out of Beijing have changed markedly.
On Sunday, the government announced a spending package worth four trillion yuan (590 billion dollars) aimed at lifting economic growth.
Although it was unclear how much was actually new spending, economists said the money would go some way to alleviating the plight of China's manufacturers.
"The outlook of China's industrial sector is not all doom and gloom," said Sherman Chan, a Sydney-based economist with Moody's Economist.com.
"The massive fiscal stimulus package announced earlier this month should help to give the industrial sector a much-needed helping hand," she said in a note.
In the first 10 months of the year, industrial output increased 14.4 percent from the same period in 2007, according to the bureau.
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