China - Economic Data & News 01 (May 08 - Oct 08)

China - Economic Data & News

Postby ishak » Wed Sep 10, 2008 3:26 pm

China posts record Aug trade surplus of US$28.7b
Reuters, 10 Sep 2008

China posted a record trade surplus of about US$28.7 billion in August, according to calculations based on partial figures issued by the customs administration on Wednesday.

Economists had expected a US$23.5 billion surplus.

Customs said exports in August were US$134.87 billion, up 21.1 per cent from a year earlier. Imports were US$106.18 billion, up 23.1 per cent from a year earlier.

The surplus for the first eight months was US$151.99 billion.

China had a trade surplus of US$25.28 billion in July and US$25 billion in August 2007.

August's reading took the rolling 12-month trade surplus to about US$253.6 billion, compared with US$249.7 billion in July.

The European Union remained China's largest trading partner with two-way trade up 26.9 per cent in the first eight months.

Trade with the United States, China's No 2 trade partner, was up 13.3 per cent in the first eight months, customs said.
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Re: China - Economic Data & News

Postby winston » Fri Sep 12, 2008 4:01 pm

Commission seeks faster power reforms

The mainland's State Electricity Regulatory Commission has recently submitted a report to the State Council to ask for faster reforms of the country's electricity price formation mechanism , the China Securities Journal reported.

Proposed measures include allowing electricity prices to be determined by the market and charging intensive users higher rates.

The ERC official said electricity prices in China are likely to be raised this year but the government is unlikely to hike on-grid tariffs -- the price at which independent power providers sell to grid companies -- as on-grid tariffs have already gone up twice in recent months.
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Re: China - Economic Data & News

Postby winston » Fri Sep 12, 2008 4:24 pm

China Retail-Sales Growth Close to Fastest Since 1999 (Update2)
By Nipa Piboontanasawat

Sept. 12 (Bloomberg) -- China's retail sales grew at close to the fastest pace in at least nine years as rising incomes encouraged consumer spending.

Retail sales rose 23.2 percent in August from a year earlier to 876.8 billion yuan ($128 billion), the National Bureau of Statistics said today, after gaining 23.3 percent in July. That was more than the 23 percent median estimate of 25 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

Domestic consumption may help to buffer the world's fastest-growing major economy as an export slowdown saps demand overseas demand. Coca-Cola Co., which agreed this month to buy China Huiyuan Juice Group Ltd. for $2.3 billion, is among foreign companies seeking a bigger share of spending fueled by rising incomes.

``Stable domestic demand will provide a cushion against the slowdown in exports,'' said Qu Hongbin, chief China economist at HSBC Holdings Plc in Hong Kong.

The yuan traded at 6.8453 versus the dollar as of 1:44 p.m. in Shanghai, compared with 6.8465 yesterday, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trade System.

Garment sales jumped 29.5 percent in August
from a year earlier and spending on meat, poultry and eggs surged 26.7 percent. Jewelry sales soared 44.3 percent.

Olympic Games

Gome Electrical Appliances Holdings Ltd., China's No. 2 electronics retailer by market value, reported first-half profit almost tripled after it opened new stores.


Some economists had expected retail-sales growth to be restrained last month by what Wang Qian, of JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Hong Kong, called the ``stay-at-home effect'' of Chinese people watching the Olympic Games on television instead of shopping.

Song Yu and Liang Hong, economists at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in Hong Kong, said the strength of sales growth was ``puzzling.'' The Olympics may have contributed, along with rising prices for non-food products, they said. Overall, inflation was 4.9 percent, down from 6.3 percent in July, as food-price gains eased.

Beijing attracted fewer overseas visitors last month compared with a year ago, even with the Olympics taking place, after the government tightened visa rules.

Foreign visitors who spent at least a night in the Chinese capital fell 7.2 percent to 389,000 in August, the Beijing Tourism Administration said. Domestic travelers who stayed at the city's star-rated hotels fell 42 percent to 708,000, it said.

Wages Growth

Urban household disposable incomes climbed 14.4 percent
to 8,065 yuan for the first six months of 2008 from a year earlier, while rural earnings rose 19.8 percent to 2,528 yuan. Adjusted for inflation, they gained 6.3 percent and 10.3 percent respectively.

China's economy expanded 10.1 percent in the second quarter, slowing for the fourth straight quarter. The government is guarding against a slump after overseas sales rose only 22.4 percent in the first eight months, down from 27.8 percent a year earlier.

Stronger consumption may help policy makers to rebalance the economy away from relying on investment and exports.

``The level of Chinese consumption is still low relative to the size of the economy,'' Mark Williams, an economist at Capital Economics Ltd. in London, said in a note last month.

Government Spending

Consumption, including government spending, had a 50 percent share of gross domestic product in 2006, compared with 71 percent in the U.S. and 65 percent in India, he said.

``But the proportion has finally stopped falling in China, suggesting that the rebalancing away from investment toward consumption, long-sought by the government, might not be too far round the corner,'' Williams said.

Slumping stocks and weakness in the property market are threats to consumer sentiment and spending.

The key CSI 300 Index of shares dropped 61 percent this year.

China's property market could be headed for a ``meltdown'' as home prices and sales decline, Morgan Stanley said today.

For the first eight months, retail sales climbed 21.9 percent from a year earlier to 6.8 trillion yuan, the statistics bureau said. That was up from the 16.8 percent pace for all of 2007.

Bloomberg's retail sales data for China began in 1999.
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Re: China - Economic Data & News

Postby millionairemind » Sat Sep 13, 2008 10:49 am

China May Loosen Lending Restrictions After Inflation Slows
By Kevin Hamlin

Sept. 13 (Bloomberg) -- China's central bank may cut the amount of cash it requires lenders to set aside as reserves as inflation slows and economic growth weakens.
Inflation was the weakest in 14 months in August, export growth cooled and industrial output grew by the least in six years, according to data released this week.

The government has already restrained gains by the yuan and loosened limits on the amount of money that banks can lend. Policy makers want to protect jobs and prevent a slump in the world's fourth-biggest economy after four quarters of slowing growth and as the outlook for exports dims, according to economists at JPMorgan Chase & Co., Societe Generale SA and Standard Chartered Bank Plc.

``The government is now likely to heed the calls of the struggling export sector for more substantive monetary-policy easing,'' said Glenn Maguire, chief Asia economist at Societe Generale in Hong Kong. ``We will have an easing in the reserve requirement ratio and potentially even reductions in lending rates.''

The central bank pushed the reserve requirement to a record 17.5 percent in June. A cut, which would be the first since 1999, may come in the first quarter of next year, with the ratio dropping to 12 percent by the end of 2009, according to Maguire.

JPMorgan expects a cut in the fourth quarter, with the requirement falling to 15 percent during next year. Standard Chartered predicts one reduction this quarter and another in the first three months of 2009.

Industrial Production

Industrial production grew last month at the slowest pace since August 2002 on weaker export demand, power shortages and factory shutdowns to reduce pollution for the Olympics.

Inflation slowed to 4.9 percent, drawing closer to the central bank's 4.8 percent target for the year and giving policy makers more room to stimulate growth. The reason was smaller gains in food prices.

Export growth has slowed as the U.S. housing recession and international credit crunch undermine demand. For the first eight months, gains cooled to 22.4 percent from 27.8 percent a year earlier.

China's economy expanded 10.1 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier. That's still the fastest pace among the world's 20 biggest economies.

Signs of softness in the economy have coincided with weakness in asset markets. The CSI 300 Index of stocks has fallen 61 percent this year. The property market could be headed for a ``meltdown'' as home prices and sales decline, Morgan Stanley said yesterday.

`Policy Turnaround'

``The question about a policy turnaround is when, not whether,'' said Huang Yiping, chief Asia economist at Citigroup Inc. in Hong Kong. ``We expect the authorities to abandon the tightening policy bias before the end of the year.''


His reasons were ``stable'' inflation, slowing economic growth and a weakening housing market. Huang didn't have an estimate for the reserve requirement or interest rates.

The key one-year lending rate may be cut once in the fourth quarter and twice in the first quarter of 2009, falling from 7.47 percent to 6.66 percent, said Darius Kowalczyk, chief investment strategist at CFC Seymour Ltd. in Hong Kong.

In a survey yesterday, he was the only one of seven economists to predict a rate cut this year or in the first quarter of 2009.

The central bank has reined in the yuan's appreciation against the dollar this quarter to 0.2 percent after a 6.7 percent increase in the first half. A stronger currency hurts exporters by making their products more expensive.

China's policy makers have already loosened loan quotas -- restrictions on how much banks can lend -- and raised export-tax rebates for garments and textiles.

Infrastructure spending is a possible tool for stimulating economic growth. Officials are working on a plan for as much as 400 billion yuan ($58 billion) of spending and tax cuts, according to economists and reports in domestic news media.
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Re: China - Economic Data & News

Postby millionairemind » Tue Sep 16, 2008 2:47 pm

Chinese baby formula scandal widens as 2nd death is announced
By Jim Yardley Published: September 16, 2008

BEIJING: China's Ministry of Health announced on Monday that a second baby had died in recent months and that 1,253 others had been sickened by contaminated milk powder in a widening food safety scandal that has exposed persistent weaknesses in the country's regulatory system.

More than 340 infants remain hospitalized, including 53 in serious condition. Inspection teams are visiting dairy farms and processing centers in the country's four main milk-producing provinces to ensure that producers are not violating safety standards.

The Chinese authorities have confirmed that the tainted baby formula was laced with melamine, a chemical additive sometimes used to make plastics and fertilizer. Last year, after thousands of pets became ill in the United States, the same chemical was found in pet food and traced to a Chinese ingredient.

The tainted milk powder has been traced to the Sanlu Group, one of China's biggest dairy producers, which operates as a joint venture with a New Zealand-based dairy conglomerate, Fonterra. China does not export milk powder to the United States.

Last week, Sanlu ordered a belated recall of its milk powder even though Chinese state media have reported that some parents had been complaining of problems since March. More than 10,000 tons of milk powder have been seized or recalled, according to the Health Ministry, and the authorities have ordered the company to halt production.
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Re: China - Economic Data & News

Postby kennynah » Tue Sep 16, 2008 3:19 pm

SSE went below 2000 points...jialat big time charlie HK man...
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Re: China - Economic Data & News

Postby millionairemind » Mon Sep 22, 2008 8:26 am

13,000 children hospitalised in China milk scare
Posted: 22 September 2008 0248 hrs

BEIJING: China said nearly 13,000 children were in hospital on Sunday after drinking toxic milk powder in a dramatic escalation of Beijing's latest safety scandal.

As the World Health Organisation questioned Beijing's handling of the crisis, premier Wen Jiabao appeared on state television promising to head off further incidents.

But a Hong Kong toddler also became the first child affected outside the mainland and more countries moved to bar Chinese milk products.

The health ministry said 12,892 infants were in hospital with 104 babies in serious condition, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Some 1,579 babies had been "cured" and discharged, the ministry said, adding that hospitals nationwide had seen almost 40,000. At least four children have died from drinking poisonous baby formula.

The scandal stems from the practice of adding industrial chemical melamine, normally used to make plastics, to watered-down milk to boost apparent protein levels.

Melamine, which causes urinary problems including kidney stones, was first discovered in baby formula and then in liquid milk, yoghurt and ice-cream, leading to mass recalls.

The problem first came to light last week in state-controlled media but New Zealand dairy Fonterra, which has a joint venture with China's Sanlu, has said it knew for weeks and had been pushing for a recall.

Some Chinese press reports have said the scam had been going on for years, with the country's chaotic and corrupt food safety system unable to detect or prevent it.

Shigeru Omi, Western Pacific director of the UN's World Health Organisation, on Sunday raised concerns the matter was not reported earlier.

"Evidently there is also a problem with internal communication," Omi told a news conference in Manila.

"It seems people already knew of this problem for some time and did not share this information."

With Brunei, Bangladesh and Burundi becoming the latest countries to bar Chinese milk products, Wen pledged to put an end to the long line of safety scares.

"What we want to do now is prevent this happening again, not just with milk products, but with all foods," he said.

"We want to prevent similar incidents occurring so that the common people can eat in peace."

China has endured a litany of scandals in recent years over dangerous products including food, drugs and toys, many of which were exported, dealing a blow to its manufacturing reputation.

Last year, melamine was found in exports of Chinese pet food which killed cats and dogs in the United States.

Meanwhile Hong Kong's government said a three-year-old girl developed a kidney stone after drinking Chinese milk powder but she has left hospital and is in good condition.

Burundi became the third African country to bar Chinese milk products after Gabon and Tanzania, while Brunei joined neighbouring Malaysia, Singapore and Bangladesh in freezing imports.

A Japanese company is recalling thousands of buns made with Chinese milk, fearing contamination. Eighteen people have been arrested in China over the scandal, state media have said. - AFP/de
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Re: China - Economic Data & News

Postby winston » Thu Oct 02, 2008 2:00 pm

CLSA'S China Sept PMI falls to record low of 47.7

China's manufacturing sector weakened sharply in September, hit by a steep fall in orders from domestic and foreign clients, a survey by brokerage CLSA showed.

CLSA's Purchasing Managers' Index dropped to 47.7 from 49.2 in August, the weakest reading since the survey was launched in April 2004 and the second straight month that it has fallen below the boom-bust line of 50 to indicate a manufacturing contraction.

While factory closures and transport restrictions related to the Olympics were still a factor in reducing output in September, evidence of weakening demand had become much more pervasive, said Eric Fishwick, head of economic research at CLSA.

REUTERS
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Re: China - Economic Data & News

Postby winston » Tue Oct 07, 2008 11:13 am

Beijing Raises Gasoline Prices to Fund Cleaner Fuels
By Yi Tian and Winnie Zhu

Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Beijing raised the retail price of gasoline and diesel by as much as 4 percent today to offset the higher cost of providing the capital city with cleaner fuels, a municipal commission said.

Gasoline prices will climb by 200 yuan ($29) a metric ton and diesel prices will increase by 290 yuan a ton for fuel sold only in Beijing, the Municipal Commission of Development and Reform said in a notice yesterday on its Web site. On Jan. 1, China introduced a costlier fuel with cleaner emissions in Beijing to cut pollution before the August Olympic Games.

Higher prices to run more than 3 million vehicles in the city will counter rising production costs at China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. and PetroChina Co. The nation's two biggest oil companies posted a combined loss of 105 billion yuan in their processing businesses during the first half, as oil prices jumped 46 percent and touched a record $147.27 a barrel in July.

``This is a delayed action from the government to offset rising production costs for the cleanest fuel introduced in the capital,'' Qiu Xiaofeng, an oil analyst with China Merchants Securities Co. said by telephone in Shanghai today, ``We expected a price increase earlier this year.''

No. 93 gasoline, the most-used type of fuel in the country, will cost 5.90 yuan a liter, up 2.8 percent from the price on June 20, when China raised prices nationally by at least 17 percent to rein in energy use. Grade 0 diesel will cost 6.02 yuan a liter, up 4.3 percent.

Gas stations in Beijing may sell No. 93 for as much as 6.37 yuan a liter after an adjustment of up to 8 percent allowed by government rules. Diesel may cost as much as 6.50 yuan a liter, according to yesterday's statement.

``As the price hike only applies to Beijing, we don't think the market will react too much to this,'' Qiu said.

Beijing, the only Chinese city supplied with fuels meeting Euro IV emission standards, consumes about 10 million tons of gasoline and diesel a year, accounting for 2.7 percent of the nation's total.
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Re: China - Economic Data & News

Postby winston » Sat Oct 11, 2008 5:46 pm

China car sales fall for 2nd month as economy ebbs

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's passenger car sales shrank for a second month in a row in September, official data showed on Friday, as a slowing economy slammed the brakes on demand in the world's second-largest vehicle market.

Monthly car sales fell 1.44 percent from a year earlier to 552,800 units, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the country's official industry association.

The data followed nine-month figures from two major foreign automakers showing a marked slowdown in growth in China, one of the few remaining bright spots for an industry hit particularly hard by the deepening global credit crisis.

Ford Motor's (F.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) China sales climbed 7.13 percent in January-September, well below 30 percent growth a year earlier, while Volkswagen AG (VOWG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) posted 13.1 percent growth in China, Hong Kong and Macau, also down from 30 percent a year ago.

Other domestic and foreign automakers such as General Motors (GM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and SAIC Motor (600104.SS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), China's biggest automaker, have yet to release their nine-month sales figures.

TAPERING OFF

Analysts and industry experts said few were likely to sustain the robust growth of recent years.

"Market growth started to taper off in the first half and the trend has extended into the second half," said Yi Junfeng, an industry analyst with Changjian Securities. "Some automakers may hold up a little better than others, but no one is immune when the economy slows."
September's sales drop followed a 6.24 percent decline in August, which marked a stunning reversal for an industry that had grown accustomed to years of double-digit sales growth.

In addition to the slowing economy, higher fuel prices and the Beijing Olympics have been blamed for keeping customers from showrooms.

Industry researcher J.D. Power and Associates, in a report on Thursday warning of a collapse in the global auto market next year under the weight of the credit crisis and economic stress, forecast China auto sales growth this year at 9.7 percent, down sharply from last year's 24.1 percent.

Rao Da, secretary general of the China Passenger Car Association, a leading industry group, was even more pessimistic.

In a research report released on Friday, he cut his estimate for 2008 China car sales growth to 5-6 percent, from a 6-8 percent forecast released just last month.

"A decline is very likely in the first half of 2009, but things could improve in the second half as monetary easing moves taken by the government gradually take effect," the report said.
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