Coronavirus: China reports surprising rail freight growth in February despite factory activity tumbling
- Rail cargoes in China rose 4.5 per cent in February, despite much of the country’s economy being on lockdown due to coronavirus
- Growth comes as factory activity and service sector output plunge to new lows in February, with analysts forecasting an economic contraction in the first quarter
The supplier delivery time sub-index in China’s manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI), which measures logistics efficiency by railway, road and air for factories, dropped to 32.1 in February, a sign that raw material supplies to the manufacturing sector were at record lows last month, the NBS said.
China Railway, meanwhile, said that China loaded 171,000 railway cars per day on average last month, a daily increase of 4,945 from a year earlier. Container freight on railways surged 39.5 per cent to 26.61 million tonnes, it added, in an surprisingly stable account of China’s rail freight network.
In the January-February period, China’s freight cargo rose by 0.6 per cent to 670 million tonnes, an all-time high, according to China Railway.
Rail freight is an important indicator used by economists to gauge the health of the economy. According to WikiLeaks, China’s Premier Li Keqiang said in 2007, when he was the Liaoning party secretary, that China’s economic growth figures were unreliable and said that he looked three indicators instead, namely railway cargo volume, electricity consumption and bank lending.