From Bloomie:
China retained a target for 7.5 percent economic growth in 2014, signaling limits on the leadership’s efforts to curb pollution and credit expansion in the world’s second-largest economy.
The goal was given in a work report that Premier Li Keqiang will deliver to the annual meeting of the legislature today in Beijing. The inflation target is 3.5 percent.
Maintaining a pace of expansion close to last year’s 7.7 percent would help sustain demand for oil and iron ore and support a global economy that’s forecast by theInternational Monetary Fund to accelerate. At the same time, analysts from UBS AG to Societe Generale SA say a lower goal would’ve been more in keeping with the government’s pledge to move away from growth at all costs.
“This is going to send a message to the market that the government will do whatever it takes to prevent growth from slowing down,” Yao Wei, China economist at Societe Generale in Hong Kong, said before the report. “Whatever it takes means they wouldn’t care so much about debt — they’d even sacrifice reform progress to achieve that.”
The exact wording was ““about 7.5 per cent” which is pretty vague and, I submit, means continued slowing for now until stimulus is required maybe around Q3. More or less the expected outcome.
