Foreign Ministry: China expected to contribute one third of global growth

China is widely expected to be the largest engine of the global economic growth by contributing one third of all growth this year, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Friday.

Wang Wenbin, spokesperson for the ministry, told a regular press briefing in Beijing that the world's second largest economy has continued to grow in a steady way, leading other major economies of the world.

"Deeply exploring the Chinese market has become a general consensus of the international community," said Wang.

The spokesperson made the comments after the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) projects China's real gross domestic product (GDP) to grow by 5.2 percent in 2023 in its economic outlook released on Wednesday.

OECD's confidence in China's growth prospects follows the International Monetary Fund (IMF)'s November projection of the country's real GDP to grow by 5.4 percent in 2023 and 4.6 percent in 2024, both up by 0.4 percentage point relative to the World Economic Outlook released in October.

Financial institutions including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank, ANZ have also raised their forecasts for China's economic growth this year to between 5 and 5.5 percent, according to Wang.

China said in March, in a government work report, that it aims to expand its economy by around 5 percent in 2023.

Speaking at a high-level conference co-hosted by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Bank for International Settlements in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region on Tuesday, People's Bank of China governor Pan Gongsheng said China's economy is expected to achieve the 5 percent growth target for the whole year.

Official data shows the sixth China International Import Expo in November saw $78.41 billion's worth of tentative deals reached for one-year purchases of goods and services, an increase of 6.7 percent from that of last year.

At the just-concluded second Global Digital Trade Expo, deals on 32 projects with a total value of over 155.8 billion yuan (about $21.89 billion), were reached by leading enterprises in the sector, surging by 316.7 percent compared with the first expo, according to the department of commerce of Zhejiang Province.

"We welcome friends of the business community from all over the world to continue to invest in China, deepen their presence in China, and share the new opportunities brought by China's high-quality development and high-level opening up," said the spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

(Cover: File photo of Lujiazui area in Pudong District of east China's Shanghai. /Xinhua)