China's economic rebound was better than expected in the second quarter (Q2) of the year amid the COVID-19 epidemic, said a World Bank official, adding that they had improved the future estimation.
"It is indeed higher than what we had projected back in June when we released our Global Economic Prospects report, and we have upgraded our forecast accordingly," Martin Raiser, World Bank country director for China, told Xinhua in an exclusive interview.
Raiser attributed China's rebound to its significant policy space in rolling out fiscal and monetary responses.
To shore up the economy against the epidemic shock, the country has introduced an array of measures, including more fiscal spending, tax relief and cuts in lending rates and banks' reserve requirements to revive the coronavirus-ravaged economy and support employment.
"Structural reforms to boost markets and competition would also help to stimulate more private investment and rekindle productivity growth," Raiser said.
It will be critical that global trade and investment remain open, countries cooperate in the search for effective treatments and a vaccine against COVID-19, and further steps are taken to cushion the impact of the global recession on the poorest countries, including where needed, through debt relief, Raiser added.
China's economy grew by 3.2 percent in April-June from a year earlier, reversing a 6.8-percent decline in the first quarter – the first contraction since at least 1992 when official quarterly gross domestic product (GDP) records started, according to China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). In the first half of 2020, China's economy declined by 1.6 percent year on year.
Read more: China's GDP posts first decline in decades, contracting 6.8 percent
The reading beats the median 1.1 percent forecast by economists surveyed by Nikkei and coincides with an AFP poll which projected the economy would claw its way back into growth territory in the second quarter of this year, after the coronavirus pandemic handed the world's second largest economy its first contraction in decades. The poll also forecast that China will be the only major economy to experience positive growth this year.
NBS figures showed that China's value-added industrial output expanded by 4.4 percent year on year in the second quarter as factories stepped up production amid COVID-19 control. Indicators such as fiscal revenue, foreign trade and foreign direct investment also charted substantial recovery, especially in June.
(With input from Xinhua)