China Sets Ambitious 5 Percent Growth Target For 2024

Beijing, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 5th Mar, 2024) China set on Tuesday a growth target of around five percent for 2024, an ambitious objective analysts said would be a challenge to meet given the severe headwinds battering the world's second-largest economy.

The growth objective, alongside the overall budget and key government policies for 2024, was announced at China's annual National People's Congress (NPC), which kicked off Tuesday morning.

Last year's NPC saw President Xi Jinping anointed for a historic third term, cementing his rule as the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong.

This year's gathering will focus on a litany of economic and security challenges, including a protracted property sector crisis, soaring youth unemployment, and a global slowdown that has hammered demand for Chinese goods.

On Tuesday Chinese leaders set a GDP growth goal of "around five percent" -- in line with last year but a far cry from the double-digit expansion that for years drove the world's second-largest economy.

The annual political conclave opened with a rendition of China's national anthem, with the country's top leadership and thousands of delegates from around the country in attendance.

"We do not consider the five percent growth target to be conservative, we actually think it is ambitious," Wang Tao, Chief China Economist at UBS, told AFP.

"The property market has continued to fall and not yet reached the bottom, which exerts downward pressure on the economy," she added, saying that would have a "negative impact on local government finance and spending, and household wealth and consumer spending".