In China there are signs of hope for the recently weakening economy: In October, retail grew significantly more than recently and than experts expected. The growth of industrial production also surprisingly accelerated somewhat.
Retail sales increased by 7.6 percent in October compared to the previous year, as the state statistics office announced on Wednesday in Beijing. This is the strongest increase since May. Experts surveyed by Bloomberg had expected an average increase of 7.0 percent.
Production in the industry increased by 4.6 percent, the statement continued. Economists had expected the value to remain at the previous month’s level of 4.5 percent. Investment in property, however, was somewhat weaker than forecast. These increased by 2.9 percent by the end of October – by the end of September investments had climbed by 3.1 percent. Experts had assumed that investments would also increase by this value by the end of October. (dpa)