IMF Photo: VCG

China's current economic growth is far ahead of the global average, and its contribution to the world economy may remain nearly one third until the end of 2024, said Steven Barnett, the IMF's Chinese representative.

Barnett said during the 2023 Tianjin Forum held in Tianjin Municipality on Friday that China has kept up its rapid economic growth despite the "limp" world economy. The IMF has forecast that global growth will be 3 percent in 2023, and 0.9 percentage points of that will come from China, dipping to 0.8 percentage points in 2024, said Barnett.

China on Wednesday revealed GDP growth of 5.2 percent in the first three quarters of 2023, along with promising data for the industry, service, consumption and investment sectors.

During Barnett's speech, he responded to concerns over Chinese consumption, saying "sometimes we misunderstand consumption in China." Data presented by Barnett showed that China's residential consumption in the second quarter of 2023 saw a 14.7 percent increase from the figure in 2019, before the pandemic, while the US saw a rise of 9 percent increase and the Eurozone was still below the pre-pandemic level.

In the first three quarters of 2023, China's total retail sales of consumer goods hit 34.21 trillion yuan ($4.68 trillion), up 6.8 percent year-on-year. The consumption expenditure contributed 83.2 percent to the overall economic growth, and lifted GDP growth by 4.4 percentage points, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics.

Barnett stated that the global economy was showing strong resilience to the impact from the pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the grain crisis, inflation and high interest rates. The IMF's medium-term forecasts showed that world economic growth may reach only 3 percent in 2028, the lowest point since the 1990s, said Barnett.

At the end of the speech, Barnett called for closer ties in business and trade cooperation to generate new driving forces for global economic growth. He advised all countries to cancel trade restrictions, restore the dispute resolution system at the WTO, and reach new market opening agreements in the areas of e-commerce, services and investment.

Global Times