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China’s economy expanded by 5.4% in the last three months of 2024, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Friday.
That’s considerably stronger than the forecast from a group of economists polled by Reuters, who had predicted expansion of 5.0% in the October to December months from a year earlier, accelerating from the 4.6% pace posted in the third quarter.
Momentum picked up in the last few months of 2024, after the Chinese leadership finally decided to go ahead with a much-needed stimulus package, mostly focused on monetary measures, in the last week of September.
“In retrospect, the policy pivot last September was meant to defend the GDP target (of around 5%),” Larry Hu, chief China economist at Macquarie Group, wrote in a research note on Wednesday.
Since then, policymakers have made a series of other moves – including a 10-trillion yuan ($1.4 trillion) debt package to help local governments, interest rate cuts and the expansion of a “cash-for-clunkers” scheme for household goods such as rice cookers – to boost growth.
As for the full year, growth came in at 5.0%, compared to the 5.2% seen in 2023. The Reuters poll had predicted growth of 4.9% for last year.
The measures are part of a broader plan to spur growth in the world’s second-largest economy, where a severe property crisis has eroded consumer wealth and hurt household spending.
China’s struggling consumer sector has been a particular pain point for the economy with analysts and policy advisers calling for urgent measures to get households spending again.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
