Image Source : China Visual
BEIJING, October 24 (TMTPOST) — China's fixed asset investment (FAI) from January to September grew 5.9% year-on-year, up 0.1 percentage points compared to the January-August period, the National Bureau of Statistics released data on Monday.
The investment growth continued to speed up, driven by effective infrastructure stabilization, high-level manufacturing investment, and decreased real estate investment.
The performance is in line with market expectations. Caixin's recent survey of 13 domestic and international institutions showed that the economists' forecast for the cumulative year-on-year growth rate of fixed asset investment from January to September was an average of 5.9%, with a forecast range of 5.4% to 6.1%.
In the three major types of investment, as more than 600 billion yuan ($82.62 million) of policy-based development financial instruments were gradually adopted, January-September infrastructure investment rose 8.6% year-on-year, 0.3 percentage points higher than the previous number, the highest since June 2021. Manufacturing investment year-on-year growth rate also increased by 0.1 percentage points to 10.1%, continuing to support the overall investment growth.
January-September real estate investment fell 8% year-on-year, a decline of 0.6 percentage points from the previous eight months. However, with the continued relaxation of real estate policy, special-purpose loans to help the delivery of buildings boosted a slight housing demand recovery. After four consecutive months of widening decline, real estate investment narrowed by 1.7 percentage points year-on-year to 12.1% in September.
Real estate leading indicators are still diverging. According to Caixin's calculations, the year-on-year decreases in the area of new commercial housing construction, sales area, and sales in September shrunk by 1.3, 6.4 and 5.7 percentage points to 44.4%, 16.2%, and 14.2%, respectively, but the area of land acquisition and completed commercial housing saw further decreases year-on-year.
Contrary to the accelerated investment growth, private investment continued its previous downward trend in the first three quarters, with growth slowing by 0.3 percentage points to 2.0%, a record low since 2021.