China's GDP up 6.1% in first quarter

• Source: Xinhua
• [12:20 April 17 2009]

China's economy expanded by 6.1 percent year on year in the first quarter, official data showed Thursday.

The quarterly growth rate was the lowest in 10 years as the global financial crisis continued to affect the world's fastest-growing economy. It was 4.5 percentage points lower than the first quarter of 2008 and down 0.7 percentage points from the previous quarter.

Gross domestic product (GDP) reached 6.5745 trillion yuan (939 billion U.S. dollars) in the first quarter, Li Xiaochao, spokesman of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), told a press conference.

People select goods at a supermarket in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province April 16, 2009. China's economy expanded by 6.1 percent, while consumer price index (CPI) declined 0.6 percent year on year in the first quarter, official data showed Thursday.(Xinhua Photo)

POSITIVE SIGNS

Li said the government's stimulus measures had produced positive results and the first quarter performance was better than expected.

First-quarter industrial output grew 5.1 percent year on year with a rise of 8.3 percent in March. Fixed asset investment rose 28.8 percent year-on-year to 2.81 trillion yuan. Deducting price factors, the real growth exceeded 30 percent.

In the first two months, investment in new projects rose 87.5 percent from the same period of last year, with that in the railway transport sector more than doubled.