China to Account for Third of Global Economic Growth in 2023, IMF Chief Says
Zhu Yanran
DATE:  Mar 27 2023
/ SOURCE:  Yicai
China to Account for Third of Global Economic Growth in 2023, IMF Chief Says China to Account for Third of Global Economic Growth in 2023, IMF Chief Says

(Yicai Global) March 27 -- China is expected to account for about one-third of global economic growth this year, given the robust rebound in the world’s second-largest economy, according to the head of the International Monetary Fund.

China has a solid economic recovery, with strong upward momentum, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said at the 2023 China Development Forum in Beijing yesterday.

The Washington-based IMF forecast in January that China’s gross domestic product may grow 5.2 percent this year. China has set itself a growth target of “around 5 percent” for 2023, the lowest in decades.

“Beyond the direct contribution to global growth, our analysis shows that a 1 percentage point increase in gross domestic product growth in China leads to a 0.3 percentage point increase in growth in other Asian economies,” Georgieva said.

In a turbulent and changing world economy, China’s sustained and stable economic development will be a rare bright spot, with accelerated growth, stable prices, full employment, and a good balance of international payments throughout the year, Han Wenxiu, deputy director of the General Office of the Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission, told forum attendees on March 25.

The pace of China’s economic recovery is accelerating, according to recent official data. In the first two months of the year, catering business revenues climbed 9.2 percent from a year earlier, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed. Express delivery firms handled 9.2 billion parcels in February, up almost 33 percent from the same month in 2022, according to the State Post Bureau.

Revenue at express delivery businesses soared over 29 percent to nearly CNY85 billion (USD12.4 billion) last month from a year earlier. It is the first time that both indicators have achieved double-digit annual growth since last March.

Eased pandemic restrictions, residents’ better incomes, high savings ratio, last year’s low base, and continued strengthening of the country’s consumption promotion policies will promote consumption as the main driving force of economic growth, Wu Chaoming, deputy director of the Chasing International Economic Institute, told Yicai Global.

Total retail sales of consumer goods are expected to grow between 7 percent and 11 percent this year, Wu added.

Some data also showed all-out efforts to expand effective investment in China, with noticeable signs of a rapid rebound in project construction, the State Information Center said. Investment will likely keep growing rapidly to better play a key role in expanding domestic demand and stabilizing the overall economy.

But China’s economic recovery still faces the problem of uneven development despite having much more solid fundamentals, Wang Yiming, vice-chairman of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges and former deputy head of the State Council’s development research center, said at the China Development Forum. The country should consider restoring and expanding consumption as the policy focus to expand domestic demand, he added.

The three-day China Development Forum wraps up in Beijing today.

Editor: Futura Costaglione

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Keywords:   IMF,Kristalina Georgieva,China Development Forum