Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said in Beijing on Friday that China has the conditions for
maintaining the current momentum of steady and fast economic growth and that his
government has full confidence in its task.
Over the past years, China's
economy has maintained stable and rapid growth, but "it is not a time for
complacency", the premier told a press conference shortly after the closing of
the annual parliamentary session Friday morning.
The Chinese economy
still has some major problems, namely unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and
unsustainable problems, Wen said.
The unstable matter is that China has
an excessively high investment growth rate, excessively large extension of
credit, excessive liquidity of the currency, and improper foreign trade and
international payment, Wen said.
China has unbalanced development
between urban and rural areas, between different regions, and between economic
expansion and social progress, the premier said.
The primary, secondary,
tertiary industries are not coordinated, investment and consumption are not
coordinated, and China's economic growth relies too much on investment and
export, said the premier.
The unsustainable issue is that China has
failed to address well the issues related to energy saving, emission reduction
and environmental protection, he said.
In order to achieve sustainable
development, the premier said, China need to boost domestic consumption, push
forward reform and opening-up, remove institutional obstacles, encourage
intellectual and technological innovation, and make more efforts to conserve
energy and reduce emissions.
"The conditions are there, and the most
important factor is that we can strive for a peaceful environment for a long
period of time to concentrate our resources and energy on economic development,"
Wen said.
"To achieve the task, although it is very arduous, we have
full confidence," Wen said.
China's economic growth rate reached 10.7 percent in 2006, the fourth
year in a row that the country's GDP growth rate exceeded 10 percent while keeping the
inflation rate at a low level.
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