IN BRIEF (Page 9)

Entrepreneurs upbeat on economy

Chinese entrepreneurs and bankers were more confident about the economy in the first quarter of this year than the previous quarter, central bank surveys showed. The entrepreneur confidence index reached 74.3 percent for the first quarter of this year, 2.5 percentage points higher than Q4 and 12.7 percentage points higher than Q1 2017, according to a People's Bank of China (PBOC) survey of more than 5,000 industrial companies. Another PBOC poll of more than 3,000 bankers showed the banker confidence index rose 2.8 percentage points from Q4 2017 to 81.9 percent in Q1.

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