Beijing, July 15: China’s economy is expected to grow more than eight per cent in the first half of 2003 despite the fall-out from SARS. “China’s economic growth rate is expected to exceed eight per cent in the first half,” Xinhua news agency said in a report.
The Statistical Bureau is scheduled to release figures for the first-half economic growth and other indicators, like the consumer price index and fixed asset investment, on Thursday.


“There will be no reversal in the momentum of rapid economic growth” despite the impact of SARS, Chen Dongqi, senior economist at the State Development and Reform Commission, was quoted as saying. China’s fixed asset investment, a vital growth engine, was expected to rise more than 30 percent in the first half of this year from a year earlier.

China’s economy is bouncing back strongly from the SARS outbreak, with factory output surging 16.9 per cent in June and exports rising 32.6 per cent. Meanwhile, China drew nearly $7 billion in FDI in June, the strongest monthly showing in a year, in the latest evidence that the economy got back on track shortly after a modest hit from SARS.

The total marked a rise in FDI of just 2.5 per cent from a year earlier, the ministry of commerce said, a far cry from growth rates that have pushed 40 per cent in recent months. But analysts said the slowdown was due to a big spike a year earlier and not the outbreak of SARS. Bureau Report