People walk to shop at the Chuhehan Street in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province on Sunday. The city announced to disburse 500 million yuan ($71 million) worth of "consumption coupons" to residents to help restart the economy after a two-month lockdown. Photo: Li Hao/GT

China's upcoming economic data for April is expected to further improve on recovering production and demand, institutional analysts said.

The industrial output is projected to reverse its contraction with a year-on-year increase of 0.8 percent in April, Huang Wentao, an analyst with the China Securities, said in an interview with the Economic Information Daily.

Li Chao, an analyst with Zheshang Securities, forecast a 1 percent rise in industrial output, after seeing several indicators for April improving from the previous month and approaching or exceeding the levels of the previous year.

The year-on-year fall in coal consumption for power generation narrowed in April while the operation rate of blast furnaces rose further from March, Huang noted.

On the demand side, consumption is getting better as more shopping malls reopen and consumers spend more when going out.

Li projected a 7.6 percent year-on-year contraction in retail sales of consumer goods in April, narrowing from a 15.8 percent decline in March.

Analysts were optimistic about the country's auto consumption. Thanks to unleashed pent-up demand and encouraging policies, automobile sales increased by 4.4 percent year on year to 2.07 million units in April, ending a 21-month contraction streak, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

"Consumption is in the process of gradual recovery. The release of consumption demand depends on the stimulation of pro-consumption policies in the short term, and on higher expected income from economic and job recovery in the medium and long terms," said Zhang Jiqiang, an analyst with Huatai Securities.

Investment, especially that in the infrastructure sector, is expected to recover at a faster pace as construction companies largely returned to work in March and have been well funded.

Improving signs can already be seen in several leading indicators, Zhang noted.

China's statistics authority will release data on retail sales of consumer goods and industrial output on Friday.