Biz China Weekly: Industrial output, retail sales, investment, employment, LPR

Source: Xinhua | 2020-03-22

The following are the highlights of China's business news from the past week:

-- INDUSTRIAL OUTPUT

China's value-added industrial output, an important economic indicator, fell 13.5 percent year on year in the first two months of 2020 as the novel coronavirus outbreak disrupted factory activities and supply chains, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed.

Output by the manufacturing industry went down 15.7 percent, while the production and supply of electricity, thermal power, gas and water reported a year-on-year decrease of 7.1 percent. The mining sector saw output down by 6.5 percent.

-- RETAIL SALES

China's retail sales of consumer goods declined 20.5 percent year on year to 5.2 trillion yuan (about 732 billion U.S. dollars) in the first two months of this year, NBS data showed.

Retail sales in rural areas dropped 19 percent year on year in the reporting period, while that in urban areas decreased 20.7 percent. Excluding automobiles, retail sales went down 18.9 percent.

-- INVESTMENT

China's fixed-asset investment (FAI) declined 24.5 percent year on year to 3.3 trillion yuan in the first two months of 2020.

In breakdown, the FAI in the primary industry dropped 25.6 percent year on year, while that in the secondary and tertiary industries went down by 28.2 percent and 23 percent, respectively, according to the NBS.

Private investment decreased 26.4 percent to 1.89 trillion yuan during the period, and investment in high-tech industries dropped 17.9 percent in the first two months.

-- EMPLOYMENT

China's job market remained generally stable in February, with the surveyed unemployment rate in urban areas standing at 6.2 percent, NBS data showed.

The figure went up 1 percentage point from the previous month.

A total of 1.08 million new urban jobs were created in the January-February period.

-- LPR

China's one-year loan prime rate (LPR), a market-based benchmark lending rate, came in at 4.05 percent on March 20, unchanged from the previous monthly adjustment, as the country's flexible and prudent monetary policy creates enough leeway for lenders to better support the economy.

The over-five-year LPR, on which many lenders base their mortgage rates, also stayed unchanged at the previous reading of 4.75 percent, according to the National Interbank Funding Center.