Chinese consumer spending slows but investment, production stabilise

This article is more than 12 months old

Nov 15, 2018 06:00 am

BEIJING Chinese consumer spending slowed in October, official data showed yesterday, adding to worries over the world's second-largest economy, but investment and industrial production appeared to stabilise.

Concerns about China have increased in recent months after third-quarter growth came in at its slowest pace in nine years, and as trade frictions with the US have ratcheted upwards.

Chinese officials are currently engaging with their US counterparts as the two economic giants try to work out a compromise on trade ahead of President Xi Jinping's meeting with Mr Donald Trump later this month at the G-20 gathering.

China's National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday retail sales slowed to an 8.6 per cent year-on-year increase last month, slightly short of estimates and down from 9.2 per cent in September.

On the positive side, fixed-asset investment, a key economic driver, showed signs of rebounding. It expanded 5.7 per cent on-year for the first 10 months of the year, picking up after hitting record lows this summer. Output at factories and workshops ticked up 5.9 per cent last month, an improvement on the 5.8 per cent in September.

"Despite the uptick... we doubt that economic growth has bottomed out just yet," Mr Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics wrote in a research note.- AFP