China records 18.3% GDP growth in Jan-Mar, 2.97 million new jobs created

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Beijing: China’s GDP jumped a record 18.3% in the first quarter of 2021, riding on strong domestic and foreign demand and aided by recovery from a low base in early 2020 when COVID-19 stalled the world’s second-largest economy, according to statistics released on Friday.

The gross domestic product (GDP) reached 24.93 trillion yuan (about $3.82 trillion) in Q1, data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said.

This is the highest quarterly growth rate since China first began publishing GDP data in 1993.

The double-digit growth puts the average Q1 growth of 2020 and 2021 at 5% from the 2019 level, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

In the first three months, China saw a steady industrial production rebound, improvement in market sales, recovery in fixed-asset investment, and noticeable momentum in foreign trade of goods, it said.

China’s economy, which was the first to be hit by the coronavirus pandemic and early to recover from its impact, grew 2.3% in 2020, registering the lowest annual growth rate in 45 years.

The GDP of the world’s second-largest economy grew by 2.3% expanding to $15.42 trillion in 2020, according to the data released by the NBS said.

In the local currency, the GDP exceeded the 100 trillion yuan ($15.42 trillion) threshold to 101.5986 trillion yuan.

Early this month, the IMF increased China’s GDP projection to 8.4% for this year, a 10-year high but cautioned that the growth is unbalanced and private consumption has not recovered as fast.

The IMF projection is higher than the over six per cent target fixed by the Chinese government for this year. In its World Economic Outlook, the IMF also cautioned Beijing to address its high corporate debt levels resulting from the easy monetary policy put in place during the coronavirus pandemic.

It also said China’s surveyed urban unemployment rate stood at 5.3 per cent in March, 0.6 percentage points lower than the same period last year.

A total of 2.97 million new urban jobs were created in the first quarter, the NBS said.

Investment by the state sector went up 25.3 per cent during the January-March period, while private-sector investment rose 26 per cent.