THE country’s first-half economic growth of 6.3 percent was “hard-won” and laid a good foundation for achieving a full-year growth target of between 6 and 6.5 percent, a spokesman for the country’s statistics bureau said yesterday.

National Bureau of Statistics spokesman Mao Shenyong told reporters during a briefing that China’s recent counter-cyclical measures to support the economy will show more obvious results during the second half of 2019.

China’s economic growth slowed to 6.2 percent in the second quarter of the year from a year earlier, the weakest in at least 27 years. But stronger-than-expected gains in June factory output and retail sales offered some signs of stabilization.

Yesterday’s growth data marked a further loss of momentum for the economy from the first quarter’s 6.4 percent, amid expectations that China will announce more measures to boost consumption and investment.

The 6.3-percent GDP increase, achieved amid slower global economic growth, weak expansion of international trade and domestic downward pressure, made China still one of the world’s fastest-growing major economies, Mao said.

China has leaned largely on fiscal stimulus to underpin growth this year, announcing massive tax cuts worth nearly 2 trillion yuan (US$291 billion) and a quota of 2.15 trillion yuan for special bond issuance by local governments aimed at boosting infrastructure construction.

Premier Li Keqiang said this month that China will make timely use of cuts in banks’ reserve requirement ratios (RRR) and other financing tools to support smaller firms, while repeating a vow not to use “flood-like” stimulus.

Industrial output climbed 6.3 percent from a year earlier, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed, picking up from May’s 17-year low and surpassing a forecast for 5.2 percent growth.

Fixed-asset investment for the first half of the year rose 5.8 percent from a year earlier, compared with a 5.5 percent increase forecast by analysts and 5.6 percent in the first five months of the year.

Retail sales for June rose 9.8 percent, eclipsing expectations for a slight pullback to 8.3 percent. Sales of automobiles surged 17.2 percent in the month, accelerating from a 2.1 percent gain in May.

A breakdown of the data showed the output of the service sector, which accounted for 54.9 percent of the total GDP, rose 7 percent in the first half, outpacing a 3 percent increase in the primary industry and a 5.8 percent rise in the secondary industry.

Consumption continued to play a major role in driving economic growth, with final consumption contributing to 60.1 percent of economic expansion in the January-June period.

Although facing a complex external environment and emerging downward pressure in the second half, the country’s fundamentals for a steady economic growth remain unchanged and the government has ample room for policy maneuvers, he said.(SD-Xinhua)