It's a normal adjustment, no need to panic: analyst
China on Monday lowered its GDP growth figure for last year by 0.1 percentage points to 7.3 percent, experts said the move is a "normal adjustment" that the public should not be over concerned with.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Monday that it had revised China's economic growth rate in 2014 to 7.3 percent from the previously released figure of 7.4 percent.
The previous 7.4 percent figure, released in January, was the lowest since 1990.
The announcement came amid mounting concerns over slowing growth in the world's second-largest economy. Several foreign media suggested that the recent downbeat data has raised concerns that China will struggle to reach this year's goal of about 7 percent.
"The public should not panic because a revised GDP growth is often slightly lower," Zhang Yiping, analyst at China Merchants Securities, told the Global Times on Monday.
The slight drop indicated that China's economy is still facing the downward pressure, Zhang said noting that more efforts should be made to achieve the growth target of 7 percent in 2015.
China's top economic planning body, the National Development and Reform Commission, said that the government "will be able to achieve its annual economic growth target", which has been set at 7 percent.
Over the weekend, Zhou Xiaochuan, the head of China's central bank, said that the recent corrective process in China's stock market is roughly in place, and a more stable financial market is expected, reported the Xinhua News Agency.
Zhou pointed out that the government had rolled out a string of policies, including central bank liquidity support, to arrest the free fall and have helped prevent systematic risks.
The country's gross domestic product last year totaled 63.614 trillion yuan ($10 trillion), NBS said on Monday. It is down 32.4 billion yuan from its initial estimate in January of this year. The change amounted to less than 0.1 percent of China's overall economy. The statistics bureau said the number could be revised once again when it releases final results in January 2016.
The main reason for the change was the service industry, which the agency said grew by 7.8 percent rather than 8.1 percent.
Chinese Finance Minister Lou Jiwei said that the Chinese government does not focus on short term fluctuations in the economy.
He said that in the long run, China will continue to implement policies to maintain price stability and steady growth in the job market.
China will not make any major policy adjustments over a change in one economic indicator, he said.
