Options wide open for sustaining steady growth

BEIJING - China has enough gas in the tank to steer its economy toward steady growth amid current adversities stemming from thwarted investment and withering exports, experts said.

As the country's economy slows, the world at large has been closely watching for when the global economic powerhouse will get back on the track of buzzing growth.

China's economy expanded 7.6 percent year on year in the second quarter of 2012, slowing from 8.1 percent in the first quarter, the National Bureau of Statistics said in July.

The growth rate marked the sixth consecutive quarter of decline and was the slowest pace since the first quarter of 2009.

Zhang Liqun, a researcher with the Development Research Center of the State Council, told Xinhua Tuesday that a raft of measures taken by the government have shown their effects, and the economy will stabilize and get out of the current slowing.

Earlier this year, China pared its gross domestic product growth target for 2012 to 7.5 percent from 8 percent in the face of a persistent slump in the United States and spreading debt woes in the European Union.

To buoy the economy, China has adopted a string of pro-growth measures, including lowering banks' reserve ratio to boost lending, subsidizing energy-saving household electrical appliances and speeding up approval for major construction projects.

Zhang said China's policy shifts have effectively prevented risks of financial debt as well as inflation, providing ample room for its macroeconomic policies to stabilize growth.

China's Consumer Price Index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, eased to a 29-month low of 2.2 percent year on year in June, leaving the government ample room to introduce more pro-growth measures to boost the slowing economy.

"At present, the most pressing task for China is to make a steady transition from an annual growth rate of around 10 percent to 7 to 8 percent," Zhang said.

The transition will help create an environment for economic transformation and the reform and upgrading of enterprises, and it will be conducive to unleashing the country's growth potential, Zhang said.

"China should closely monitor changes to situations at home and abroad and continue to push ahead the implementation of its pro-growth policies to enable the steady transition toward growth of 7 to 8 percent," Zhang said.