China’s industrial output growth weakened in August to its slowest pace in more than three years, official figures showed on Sunday, confirming a deepening slowdown in the world’s second-biggest economy.
Production increased just 8.9 per cent year-on-year last month, the National Bureau of Statistics announced – the lowest result since a similar rise of 8.9 per cent in the depths of the global economic crisis in May 2009.
China’s economy has seen a marked easing over the past year, expanding 7.6 per cent in the second quarter of this year, the worst performance in three years and the sixth straight quarter of easing.
The latest gloomy readings come as export-reliant nations feel the pinch from collapsing demand caused by the long-running debt crisis gripping Europe and the stuttering recovery in the United States.
China’s August output figure “says clearly that growth was weakened further”, Lu Ting, China economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said in a report.
Also on Sunday, the statistics bureau announced that China’s inflation rate accelerated slightly in August amid higher costs for food, potentially limiting the government’s ability to enact fresh monetary stimulus measures.
Consumer prices rose 2.0 per cent year-on-year as food prices increased 3.4 per cent. Inflation stood at 1.8 per cent in July.