Image Source : China Visual

BEIJING, August 15 (TMTPOST) -- Despite the central government's policies to prop up economic growth that have boosted infrastructure investments, fixed asset investment growth in the first seven months slowed down due to slowing investment growth of the manufacturing industry and the real estate industry.

Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Monday showed that in the first seven months, fixed asset investments grew by 5.7% year-on-year, which was a new low for the year and down 0.4 percentage points from the first half of 2022. The growth rate fell 0.77 percentage points from June to 0.16% in July.

According to a recent survey on 13 domestic and international institutions by China's leading media outlet Caixin Media, economists forecasted that the January-July fixed-asset investment growth rate averaged 6.3% year-on-year, with a forecast range of 5.9% to 7.0%. In other words, the actual investment growth rate is below the expectation.

Infrastructure investments continued to gain momentum among the three major investment categories, with cumulative year-on-year growth of 7.4% from January to July, 0.3 percentage points higher than the year's first half. The issuance of local  debt in the year's first half was largely over, and the issuance volume was reduced to 61 billion yuan ($9 billion) in July. The funds raised from the previous issuance continue to provide ample financial support for infrastructure construction.

The cumulative year-on-year growth rate of manufacturing investments in the first seven months fell 0.5 percentage points to 9.9%, a record low since 2021 but still higher than the overall growth rate. This partly stems from the low base caused by the pandemic. Some market analysts said that benefiting from stronger export resilience, the spread between the industrial producer price index (PPI) and consumer price index (CPI) was widening.

Real estate investment growth continued to slow down, and it is primarily relying on favorable government policies to maintain growth. The cumulative year-on-year growth rate of private investments continued to decline to 2.7% in the first seven months, which was higher than the overall investments but 0.8 percentage points lower than the cumulative year-on-year growth in the first half of the year, the lowest since 2021.