Provinces exaggerate economic growth by Natallie Cai
Mainland provincial governments may have exaggerated their economic growth last year by more than
5 trillion yuan (HK$6.22 trillion). The combined audited value of the gross domestic product of 31 provinces totaled 57.69 trillion yuan in 2012, outpacing the preliminary reading of 51.93 trillion yuan as measured earlier by the National Bureau of Statistics.
This marks a record 5.76 trillion yuan gap -
equal to the total output of Guangdong province last year, the Beijing-based China Youth Daily reported yesterday.
Since 1985, the GDP of each province has been measured by its respective authority and then all data has been tallied by the central government. But figures submitted by local administrations have surpassed those released by the NBS for the past few years.
Although the bureau and the Ministry of Supervision jointly cross checked local government data, the gap has widened.
Foreign brokerages have seemingly refused to believe official data about China's economic growth, which has already slowed.
JPMorgan expects the growth in the world's second-largest economy to ease from 8.3 percent on average in 2013-2015 to 6.6 percent during 2016-2020.
The pace of economic growth in the mainland is likely to ease in the future as its primary drivers of the past 20 years - investment and production - take a slide, the US investment bank said in a note yesterday.
Investment and production have contributed 4 percentage points and 3.1 percentage points, respectively, of the mainland's GDP in the past decade, the report said.
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It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"