MNI POLICY: China Confident Of Maintaining Growth: Spox

China is confident that the current growth momentum can be maintained into the fourth quarter, Liu Aihua, spokeswoman for the National Bureau of Statistics, said at a data release briefing on Monday.

The domestic economy grew 4.9% y/y in Q3. Consumption accounted for 1.7 percentage points of that growth while in Q2 it had a negative impact of 2.3 pps, Liu said.

The contribution of investment declined to 2.6 pps in Q3 from 5 pps in Q2 while that of net exports edged up to 0.6 pp from 0.5 pp, consolidating a domestic demand-driven growth pattern, according to Liu.

CONSUMPTION RECOVERY

Nevertheless, retail sales are still at a "low level of receovery," Liu said, adding that China will continue to make efforts to increase incomes and encourage consumer demand further.
While retail sales grew 3.3% y/y in September, faster than August's 0.5%, cumulative sales for the first three quarters declined 7.2% y/y.

Besides the rapid growth in online consumption, offline and services consumption as well as spending on expensive goods are also accelerating, Liu said. Sales of cosmetics, gold, silver and jewelry as well as automobiles returned to double digits in September, Liu added.