NPC panel warns economy overheating

(Agencies/chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2007-07-18 14:27

BEIJING - A key Chinese parliamentary panel warned the country's runaway economy is in danger of overheating amid rising inflationary pressure, Shanghai Securities News reported Wednesday.

A report by the National People's Congress' Financial and Economic Affairs Committee drew its conclusions after meetings with key economic government ministries, the People's Bank of China and the National Bureau of Statistics.

"The economic overheating trend is even clearer. Inflationary pressure continues to increase, especially food and house prices," the committee was quoted as saying.

"The government is highly concerned about the overly rapid rise of food prices and will closely watch domestic and overseas price movements to reasonably guide rising prices." said the committee.

China will report Thursday that the economy accelerated by around 11 percent in the second quarter of this year, little changed from the 11.1 percent growth recorded in the January-March period, the statistics bureau has indicated.

June consumer price inflation is also expected to come in well above the government's target of three percent, after rising to 3.4 percent in May.

The commmittee said the government would "moderately tighten" monetary policy to control excess liquidity and lending growth, echoing official comments following a State Council meeting chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao on June 13.

It said the government will use a combination of policies to reduce liquidity in the banking system and better control credit flows to control lending by commercial banks.

Credit and land policies to control the growth of investment would also be applied.

The central bank has already hiked interest rates twice this year and five times required commercial banks to place more money in reserve in an effort to cool inflation, fixed-asset investment and stock market speculation.

But the steps seemingly have done little to rein in the investment boom, raising concerns among officials that the already excessive liquidity troubling the economy would be even harder to contain and eventually lead to an abrupt slowdown in growth.



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