China lowers growth target to around 7 per cent amid slowdown

China today scaled back its growth target to around seven per cent after posting a 24-year low GDP rate of 7.4 per cent last year, signalling that the downward spiral of the world's second largest economy would continue with "formidable" difficulties ahead.
The increase for the GDP for this year will be "approximately seven per cent", Premier Li Keqiang said in his work report presented to the legislature, the National People's Congress (NPC) here.
He said the target for the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the main gauge of the inflation is around three per cent besides creation of 10 million jobs and 3.1 per cent cut in energy intensity to reduce the emission of major pollutants.

"The target growth of approximately seven per cent takes into consideration what is needed and what is possible," Li said.
Predicting the situation in 2015, Li admitted that the difficulties China is to face may be "even more formidable" than last year, with downward pressure on the economy building up and deep-seated problems in development surfacing.
A recent IMF forecast said China's growth rate would further decline to 6.8 this year and 6.3 next year falling behind India's 6.5 per cent.

Summarising weaknesses in 2014's work, Li listed sluggish investment growth, relatively damp consumer demand, increasing labour cost, inefficient growth model, overcapacity, weak rural infrastructure and serious pollution.

He also expressed dissatisfaction over the implementation of some policies and denounced laziness and corruption among a small number of civil servants.
However, Li said he is "fully confident" as China's development has enormous potential and is hugely resilient, with ample room for growth.
He said growth ration was steady as the GDP reached 63.6 trillion yuan (USD 10.39) last year at the growth of 7.4 per cent and announced a host infrastructure projects besides pilot Special Economic Zones in the budget to spur growth.