Chinese economy growth slows to 7.7 per cent
Beijing - China's economy grew only 7.7 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter, a drop of 0.2 percentage points from the previous quarter, officials said Monday.
The data, released by the National Bureau of Statistics, was also lower than the 8.0 per cent predicted by a poll of analysts by the US-based Wall Street Journal.
Dragging industrial production and retail consumption were the main factors slowing the gross domestic product growth in the world's second-largest economy.
Industrial output grew 9.5 in the January-to-March period from the previous year, down from 11.6 per cent in the same quarter in 2012, and retail was up 12.4 per cent, compared to the previous year's 14.8-per-centgrowth.
Growth in fixed-asset investment, a measure of government spending on infrastructure, remained strong at 20.9 per cent year-on-year in the quarter, the same rate as in 2012.
GDP growth for the whole of 2012 was 7.8 per cent, the lowest since 1999.
China has set a target of 7.5-per-cent growth for 2013.//DPA
