Business & Finance

First Time In Decades China’s Economy Contracts As GDP Shrinks 6.8%

China’s economy shrank for the first time since at least 1992 as drastic measures to contain the pandemic hammered production & spending.

Beijing: Chinese economy shrank for the first time in decades in the Jan-March quarter as extreme steps to contain the COVID-19 pandemic hammered production & spending, official data showed Friday.

Gross domestic product dropped to 6.8 % in the Jan-March quarter, as per figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), higher than the 6.5% drop forecast by analysts in a Reuters poll and inverting a 6% growth in the previous quarter.

The world’s second-largest economy recorded its first negative growth since it began logging quarterly data in the early 1990s.

Even as China has managed to resume substantial parts of its economy from a halt in February, analysts say legislators face an ascending fight to revive growth as the COVID-19 pandemic ravages demand globally.

However, the urban jobless rate of China was at 5.9% in March, dropping from 6.2% in February.

Complete year GDP growth estimations have declined to 1.7%, as per AFP’s poll, which would be the worst yearly growth since 1976.

Also Read: Pizza Delivery Boy Tests Positive for COVID-19, 72 Families Quarantined

The International Monetary Fund has warned that coronavirus Pandemic will trigger a global economic contraction worse than the ‘Great Depression’ and pegged China’s 2020 growth at a grim 1.2%.

The COVID-19 pandemic has infected over 2 million across the world and over 130,000 have succumbed to the disease.

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