杂志汇中国与非洲

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) praised China’s strategy to shift the policy focus from highspeed to high-quality growth, through reforms and supply-side restructuring. The IMF expects that while Chinese debt is still a danger, China’s growth will rebalance to 5.5 percent by 2023, moderately down from an estimated 6.6 percent in 2018. The transformed growth model will include developing a sustainable real economy, preventing systemic risks and improving standards of living. The government is also looking to go greener, by shrinking heavy industry’s capacity and production to reduce pollution. Another step in China’s drive to open its economy is the effort to restructure state-owned enterprises through mergers and acquisitions, capacity consolidation and the emphasis on quality instead of quantity. Foreign investors increasingly see the reformed Chinese economy as a viable market, as China’s financial industry is becoming more transparent and attractive.

Growth, Stability Persist amid Concerns

May 2018 saw yet another month of stable economic growth in China. Maintaining this degree of stability over an extended period has been one of the fundamental enablers for China’s economic success. The Chinese economy remained resilient in May despite the significant concerns around growing corporate debt. There has long been strong consensus that China’s corporate debt to GDP ratio is unsustainably high, and a deleveraging of the real economy is now seen as inevitable. This would significantly hamper growth as stabilizing this would necessitate a reduction in business investment growth.

Key Economic Indicators

China’s producer price index achieved a four month high after rising for a second consecutive month in May, rising 4.1 percent from a year earlier and growing 0.4 percent from the previous month. This growth, which outperformed analysts’ predictions, has primarily been driven by higher commodity prices, including a 7.4 percent increase in raw material prices underpinned by strong demand from the steel sector. Consumer price index (CPI) rose 1.8 percent year on year but declined 0.2 percent from the previous month. With food prices remaining fairly steady, China’s CPI is stable, the main threat to this being the trade tensions between China and the U.S., which targets agricultural products.

The ChinAfrica Econometer is produced by The Beijing Axis, an international advisory and procurement firm operating in four principal areas: Procurement, Sales Activation, Capital, and Strategy. For more information, please contact: Kobus van der Wath, [email protected], www.thebeijingaxis.com