China’s economy stumbles on power crunch, property woes

  • China Q3 GDP grows 4.9% y/y vs 5.2% forecast
  • Sept factory output growth weakest since March 2020
  • Property construction extends declines

BEIJING, Oct 18 (Reuters) – China’s economy hit its slowest pace of growth in a year in the third quarter, hurt by power shortages, supply chain bottlenecks and major wobbles in the property market and raising pressure on policymakers to do more to prop up the faltering recovery.

Data released on Monday showed gross domestic product (GDP) grew 4.9% in July-September from a year earlier, the weakest clip since the third quarter of 2020 and missing forecasts.

The world’s second-largest economy is facing several major challenges, including the China Evergrande Group debt crisis, ongoing supply chain delays and a critical electricity crunch, which sent factory output to its weakest since early 2020, when heavy COVID-19 curbs were in place.

“The domestic economic recovery is still unstable and uneven,” said National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) spokesperson Fu Linghui at a briefing in Beijing on Monday.

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