CHINA’S power usage, rail freight and property market have all shown improvement since August, indicating that the economy is stabilizing, the country’s top economic planning agency said yesterday.

    The effects of supportive policies, including interest rate cuts, property market stimulus and local government debt swaps, will feed into the economy over the next few months and help underpin growth, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on its website.

    “The power usage, rail freight, as well as real estate prices and turnover have all improved into August, indicating the economy is stabilizing amid fluctuations,” the NDRC said.

    “The economy is expected to maintain steady growth and we are able to achieve annual economic growth target,” it added.

    A flurry of recent soft indicators — and a collapse in China’s stock markets — had heightened fears of a hard landing for the world’s second-biggest economy.

    China’s economy, which grew 7 percent in the first half from a year earlier and in line with the government’s target for the year, is headed for its slowest economic expansion in 25 years in 2015.

    The recent downbeat data, however, have raised the risk the government could miss the full-year growth target.

    The National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday that it had revised China’s economic growth rate in 2014 to 7.3 percent from the previously released figure of 7.4 percent.

    The NDRC cited data from the State Grid as saying that China’s total power consumption in August rose 2.47 percent on the year to 508.3 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) — the fastest growth so far this year and steady growth was likely to continue in September.

    The NDRC said weak industrial growth and falling output of key energy-intensive materials like steel and cement have cut China’s power use this year.

    Total generation fell 2 percent in July to 509 billion kWh, according to official data. It rose just 0.4 percent over the first seven months of the year.

    The average daily rail freight volume rose 1.6 percent in August from July, the NDRC said

    China’s exports are likely to swing into positive growth in August from an 8.3 percent drop in July, the agency said without giving specifics.

    The customs office is due to release August trade figures today. Analysts polled by Reuters expected exports to drop 6 percent in August compared with a year earlier.

    (SD-Agencies)