Other figures released on Wednesday showed a dip in the pace of investment and loan growth as the impact of the initial burst from a bank-financed 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) economic stimulus package, announced a year ago, tapered off.Exports and imports also undershot market forecasts, falling from year-earlier levels for the 12th month in a row. But economists said China was maintaining the momentum of its recent recovery, which has made it a certainty that Beijing will surpass its target of 8 percent growth for 2009 as a whole.
Policymakers have already asked banks to lend less freely, but the consensus among economists is that interest rates will not rise until well into 2010. “There will be no immediate policy shift, but a tightening policy is the big trend as the economy is growing so fast,” said Gao Shanwen, chief economist at Essence Securities in Beijing.
Industrial output rose 16.1 percent in the year to October, the fastest pace since March 2008 before the global downturn brought China’s export-orientated factories to their knees.Trade, by contrast, was weaker than economists had expected. Exports in October were down 13.8 percent from a year earlier, an improvement on September’s 15.2 percent fall but short of the median market forecast of a 13.2 percent drop. And imports were down 6.4 percent from October 2008, compared with forecasts of a 1.0 percent fall and a 3.5 percent year-on-year decline in September.
