Chinese retail sales grew last month at the fastest level since the start of the year, official figures showed on Friday, an encouraging sign for Beijing as it looks to boost sluggish consumption.
Officials have unveiled a raft of measures since late September, including interest rate cuts and debt swaps, aimed at boosting activity in the world’s second-largest economy, which has struggled to regain momentum since the pandemic hit.
Among the problems facing policymakers are collapsing domestic consumption, resulting in deflationary pressures, a collapse of the real estate sector and geopolitically fraught trade disputes.
Retail sales rose 4.8 percent in October from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said, an acceleration from 3.2 percent in September.
The index also significantly outperformed the 3.8 percent forecast in a Bloomberg survey of analysts and represents the best index since February.
Figures also showed that the national urban unemployment rate fell slightly to 5 percent from 5.1 percent in September.
However, industrial production growth fell to 5.3 percent in October, NBS figures showed, compared to 5.4 percent the month before.
The NBS said in a statement that in October “positive factors accumulated and increased and the national economy was stable, with progress and growth.”
Beijing is pushing for an official national growth target this year of around five percent, a target most economists expect to narrowly miss.
But in recent weeks, officials have announced their most aggressive measures in years in an effort to revive the economy.
The new policies included a debt swap program to ease the burden on local governments, reductions in mortgage rates, and the elimination of certain restrictions on home purchases.
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