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Chinas fixed asset investment grew 31.1 per cent during thefirstseven months of the year compared with the same period a yearago,the National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday.The bureau,whichdid not give figures for July, said the countrys fixedassetinvestment stood at 2,711.6 billion yuan (US$326.7 billion)fromJanuary to July.According to estimates by investment bankGoldmanSachs (Asia), Julys growth rate would be about 31.5percent.Chinas fixed asset investment showed
a stark andstrongerimprovement in July than we expected, said Liang Hong, itsChinaeconomist.The statistics bureau said sectors that continued toshowstrong growth were electrical machinery, transport, chemicalsandutilities.In addition, investment in construction andinvestmentfrom foreign direct investment also picked up.ZhuJianfang, aneconomist at China Securities, said improvement infixed assetinvestment bore close relation to the governmentsrecent policychanges.While continuing to curb investment inred-hot sectorssuch as cement and steel, the government increasedinvestment inbottleneck sectors such as energy and transportation,hesaid.Zhang Liqun, a senior researcher with the StateCouncilDevelopment Research Centre, said Julys figureswereencouraging.If fixed asset investment grows at about 30 percentthis year, the countrys economy will grow faster than lastyear,he said.But figures in July alone did not indicate whetherfixedasset investment had become stable, he said. We need toobservethe figures for the next few months.Im still worrying thefixedasset investment growth might decline too much, because thiswouldhave a big impact on the economic growth, he said.Thegovernmentwants to bring economic growth down from current levelswhere manyresources such as oil have been constrained, but needs itto stayabove 7 per cent to generate enough jobs.Chinas fixedassetinvestment has grown rapidly since the second half of lastyear. Itrose to 53 per cent during the first two months.Thegovernmentworries that excessive growth in some sectors and areascould havea serious impact on the economy.As a result, thegovernment hastaken a raft of measures to try to cool the economy.The measuresinclude raising bank reserve requirements three times,curbingunwanted fixed asset investment projects and issuingtighterrestrictions on new projects in overinvested industriessuch asproperty and steel.The macro-control measures have achievedinitialresults, says economist Zhang Xueying of the StateInformationCentre.Fixed asset investment slowed to 34.7 per cent inApril and18.3 per cent in May.Other major economic indicators alsosuggestthe macro-control measures are working.The countrysindustrialoutput rose 15.5 per cent in July compared with the samemonth lastyear.The growth rate was 0.7 percentage points lower thantheprevious month.Broad money supply or the M2 rose ayear-on-year15.3 per cent in July, according to the centralPeoples Bank ofChina. The growth rate was 5.4 percentage pointslower than a yearearlier, and 0.9 percentage points down from thepreviousmonth.Economists began to worry about the possibility of anabrupteconomic slowdown.The government should not take furthermeasures- including a rate hike - to cool the economy, Zhangsaid.Chinaseconomy grew a year-on-year 9.6 per cent during thesecond quarterof this year. It rose 9.8 per cent during the firstquarter. Forthe first six months, the countrys gross domesticproduct grewyear-on-year at 9.7 per cent to around 5.9 trillionyuan (US$708.1billion).Bureau spokesman Zheng Jingping said theoverallperformance of the countrys economy was good.(ChinaDaily)
（信息来源：MOFTEC英文版子站）
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