THE world’s leading chief financial officers have a more positive outlook for China’s economy than they do for the economy of the United States, according to the latest third-quarter CNBC Global CFO Council Survey.

The CNBC Global CFO Council represents some of the largest public and private companies in the world, collectively managing more than US$5 trillion in market value across a wide variety of sectors. In the survey, CFOs gave an average forecast of “stable” for China’s GDP and “modestly declining” to the United States.

For the third quarter, the council upgraded the rest of Asia and the eurozone from “modestly declining” to “stable” and Latin America from “strongly declining” to “modestly declining,” while remaining the cautious tune to the U.S. economy that is seen as “modestly declining” for the second straight quarter.

It’s the first time in the survey’s history that this elite group’s financial executives were more upbeat on China, CNBC said.

The outlook echoes the fact that China’s economy is rebounding with a more controllable epidemic situation domestically thanks to effective epidemic prevention works.

China’s economy returned to modest growth of 3.2 percent in the second quarter of 2020, while the U.S. economy decreased at an annualized rate of 32.9 percent in the same quarter, the historic worst single-quarter decline in history.

World Bank upgraded China’s economy forecast based on the second-quarter GDP rebound, attributing the reversion to its significant policy space in rolling out fiscal and monetary responses.

The International Monetary Fund has forecast China’s real GDP to expand 1 percent for 2020, the only major economy expected to report growth in 2020, while the United States is expected to see real GDP contract 8 percent during the same period.(SD-Agencies)