China’s retail sales growth slowed last month, government data showed Monday, in a worrying sign for domestic demand in the world’s second-largest economy.
Retail sales in October grew 10 percent from a year earlier, missing expectations for sales to match the previous month’s pace of 10.7 percent, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said.
Other data for last month showed industrial output growth of 6.1 percent, unchanged from September and slightly below forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey of economists.
China is a key driver of the world economy but its expansion has slowed significantly from the double-digit years of the past.
Now Beijing is seeking to make a difficult transition away from its dependence on exports and heavy industry toward consumption as the key driver of the economy, but the process is proving bumpy.
“It could be the consumer participation in growth is declining,” independent Hong Kong-based analyst Andrew Collier told Bloomberg.
“It’s harder for the government to control retail sales than (fixed-asset investment) or industrial production, which is heavily state-driven.”
Beijing has ramped up fiscal stimulus and loose credit to keep the economy on target to meet its 6.5-7 percent growth target for the year.
Fixed-asset investment, a gauge of infrastructure spending, rose 8.3 percent in the first 10 months of the year.

Source: Arab News