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China retail sales grow 13.2%, inflation steady
August 9, 2013, 9:53 am

According to the UN, China is on track to achieve the UN's Millennium Development Goal of reducing poverty and hunger by 50 percent by 2015.[Xinhua]

China has set an inflation target of 3.5 per cent for 2013 [Xinhua]

Improved economic indicators released in China suggest the Asian nation’s economy could be stabilising.

The country’s nominal retail sales grew 13.2 per cent year on year last month to 1.85 trillion yuan ($300.2 billion), according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The retail growth rate was down by 0.1 percentage point from June, but it is higher than the 12.7 per cent growth for the first half of 2013.

A main gauge of inflation, China’s Consumer Price Index (CPI), stood at 2.7 per cent year on year in July, the same as June.

The government has set an inflation target of 3.5 per cent for 2013.

China’s industrial output also picked up in July expanding 9.7 per cent year on year, nearly one per cent higher than June’s posting.

The country’s growth has eased to 7.5 per cent in the second quarter from 7.7 per cent in the first three months of the year.

Economists have said August data would be critical in confirming a recovery of the Chinese economy.

Ryan Rutkowski, a China research analyst with Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics said worries triggered by the recent slight slowdown in China’s economic growth are “overblown”.

China is still among the fastest growing economies in the world, and only a handful of countries grew faster than 7.5 per cent in the second quarter, Rutkowski was quoted by Chinese news agency Xinhua.

Source: Agencies