BEIJING- China is confident of maintaining steady industrial growth this year in spite of big pressures facing the sector, Minister of Industry and Information Technology Miao Wei said on Monday.
The country’s industrial output topped expectations in December by growing 6.9 percent from a year earlier, the strongest pace in nine months, bringing full-year 2019 expansion to 5.7 percent.
Economic growth in the world’s second largest-economy cooled to a near 30-year low of 6.1 percent in 2019 amid a bruising trade war with the United States, and more stimulus is expected this year as Beijing tries to boost sluggish domestic demand.
China welcomes foreign firms to participate in the building of its 5G networks and opposes politicizing the technology issue, Miao told a news conference, in an apparent criticism of Washington’s moves against Huawei, the world’s largest maker of mobile networking equipment.
Washington is trying to persuade Britain not to use Huawei equipment in the upgrade of its telecoms network.
China is also studying postponing the reduction of subsidies for new energy vehicles, Miao added.
China expects vehicle sales to remain at around 25 million units in 2020, and they could be flat from last year or decline, Miao said.
China also kept its lending benchmark rate steady for the second month in a row on Monday, after the central bank left borrowing costs of medium-term loans unchanged earlier this month.
The one-year loan prime rate (LPR) was unchanged at 4.15 percent from the previous monthly fixing. The five-year LPR also remained the same at 4.80 percent.
A Reuters snap survey last week showed that China’s financial markets were nearly evenly divided over whether the benchmark lending rate would be lowered this month in a further bid to support the sluggish economy or kept steady.
The mixed views came as the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) injected fresh funds via it medium-term lending facility (MLF) loans into the banking system last week but left the interest rate unchanged.
MLF, one of the PBOC’s main tools in flexibly managing longer-term liquidity in the banking system, now serves as a guide for the new LPR. The interest rate on the one-year MLF now stands at 3.25 percent.
The LPR is a lending reference rate set monthly by 18 banks. The PBOC revamped the mechanism to price LPR in August, loosely pegging it to the MLF rate. — Reuters
