China's growth gives boost to global economy: media

China's consumer-driven growth has provided a boost for the global economy, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

China's gross domestic product expanded 4.5 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of this year, beating economists' expectations and helping to cushion the global economy against a downturn.

The country's retail sales soared 10.6 percent from a year earlier in March, the biggest monthly gain since June 2021, China's National Bureau of Statistics reported on Tuesday.

Overseas Chinese Banking Corp currency strategist Christopher Wong said it was quite an encouraging report, with retail sales, GDP and property sales all higher than expected, reinforcing that post-pandemic recovery momentum has remained intact, as reported by Reuters.

The upbeat data provides a foundation for China to meet or exceed its GDP growth goal of about 5 percent for the year. That would make China, alongside India, the largest contributors to global growth in 2023, the report said, citing the International Monetary Fund.

China's strong GDP growth momentum prompted Citigroup Inc and Societe Generale SA to upgrade their projection on China's full-year growth to 6.1 and 6 percent, respectively.

China remains crucial to the global economy this year and will be the top contributor to global growth over the next five years, with its share set to be double that of the US, according to Bloomberg calculations based on IMF data.

"We expect activity data to improve further in April and May [in year-on-year terms] on a very low base last year," Goldman Sachs analysts wrote in a note as reported by Financial Times.