Strong momentum and rebound in exports expected to keep economy on strong track

China's economic growth will reach 6.8 percent year-on-year in 2017, thanks to the strong economic momentum witnessed in the first six months of the year, a rebound in exports and a favorable external environment, a new report says.

The report, published by the Investment Strategy Group, a research unit of Goldman Sachs, says the country's gross domestic product is on track this year to record the first uptick in seven years.

"This would be the first, albeit modest, acceleration in annual growth since 2010," says Wang Shengzu, co-head of the ISG.

Recent growth stabilization has led to a notable rise in overseas investment in domestic fixed income products, the report says.

Overseas investment in negotiable certificates of deposit, a financial instrument trading in the interbank market, rose to $12 billion in August, says Wang.

Stronger growth momentum also helped reverse foreign exchange outflows to net inflows in August, the first such reversal in nearly three years, according to data from Goldman Sachs' Global Investment Research Division.

According to ISG estimates, the general government fiscal balance stood at minus 2.3 percent of GDP in the first three quarters, the largest January-to-September deficit in the past decade, suggesting a very proactive fiscal policy while the monetary policy stance remained largely neutral.

The country's GDP growth continued to show resilience in the first three quarters at 6.9 percent. Final consumption accounted for 64.5 percent of the headline growth or 4.4 percentage points, with the rest coming from investment and net exports, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

"We think structural reforms, supply-side policies and more market-friendly initiatives are needed to support China's rebalancing," says Wang.

"After the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, reforms in some areas are expected to accelerate in the near term, such as State-owned enterprise reforms and financial market liberalization," he adds.

"From the risk management perspective, deleveraging and strengthening financial regulation to contain systemic risks remain the key focus of the government," Wang says.

China has made progress in rebalancing away from external-led growth and toward a more service-dominated economy, while the core challenge remains an excessive reliance on debt, Zhang Longmei, the International Monetary Fund's deputy resident representative in China, said at a forum hosted by the International Monetary Institute of Renmin University of China.

Some key tasks in the near term include the reduction of financial sector agility and resumption of the transition to a flexible currency exchange rate, she said.

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(China Daily European Weekly 11/10/2017 page25)