China Q1 GDP growth eases to 7.7%, mild recovery on track

The strength of the Chinese economic recovery thrown into doubt the world's second-largest economy grew by 7.7 percent in the first three months of 2013 on an annualised basis. That's weaker than market expectations of eight percent growth. For more on these numbers, we're joined by our reporter Yin Hang in the studio. Yin Hang - what was the major drag?

With surging liquidity conditions and an up-tick in export growth recorded in the first few months of the year, expectations were high that China's GDP number would come in at that eight percent number. Sheng Laiyun, the spokesman attributes slower GDP growth to government's tapping of its policy brakes and volatile external environments. Take a listen to this.

China recorded a slower-than-expected year-on-year economic growth rate of 7.7 percent in the first quarter of 2013.

It's lower than the 7.9 percent growth in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Sheng Laiyun, spokesman of the National Bureau of Statistics, says China's overall economic growth is stable.

China is likely to achieve its whole-year target.

Sheng Laiyun, Spokesman, National Bureau Of Statistics, said, "Faced with complex and volatile domestic and external environments, the Chinese government has persisted in making progress while maintaining growth in economic development. Focused on improving economic development quality and profits, the government has continued to implement proactive fiscal policy and prudent monetary policy, improve macro regulation, accelerate transformation of government function, upgrade economic restructuring. The economy has been kept generally stable in the first quarter. "

China's domestic consumption is making a growing contribution to China's economic growth.

Consumption contributes more than 55 percent of China's economic growth.

Sheng Laiyun said, "China is still at a stage of accelerating its industralization and urbanization. We're still undergoing agriculture modernization, and IT upgrading. The development of Chinese market and these sectors will unleash huge potential for consumption and investment."

Yin Hang, CCTV Reporter, said, "China's statistics agency says the slower economic growth recorded in the first quarter provides a good opportunity for China's enterprises to transform its unfashioned growth pattern and cut excessive capacity."

Meanwhile, China's inflation was relatively restrained in the first quarter, easing from a nine-month high in February to 2.1 percent year-on-year in March. Money supply also grew steadily, with M2 grew by 15.7 percent year-on-year.

Experts say these figures all point to a mild recovery of the world second largest economy.