Economist at UOB Group Ho Woei Chen, CFA, assesses the latest set of Chinese data releases.
Key Points
“China’s July data shows the economy slowing further as the outbreak of COVID-19 Delta variant since mid-July in a number of cities as well as floods in the country are sapping the growth momentum. This has hit the private consumption recovery particularly hard.”
“Retail sales, industrial production, fixed asset investment (FAI) as well as jobless rate were all weaker than expected in July.”
“Taking into account of the weaker than expected July data and increasing growth headwinds, we downgrade our forecast for China’s 2021 GDP growth to 8.6% from 9.1% with 3Q21 at 5.7% y/y and 4Q21 at 5.1% y/y respectively (1Q21 at 18.3% and 2Q21 at 7.9%).”
