China's industrial production cooled down in early 2008 on weakening exports and the worst winter weather in half a century, official data showed Thursday. Industrial output, a measure of factory production in the world's fourth-largest economy, expanded by 15.4 percent in January and February from the same period a year ago, the National Bureau of Statistics said.
That compares with a growth rate of 18.5 percent in the first two months of 2007. Industrial output also grew by 18.5 percent for all of last year. "It has slowed down since the second half of last year," said Song Guoqing, a Beijing-based economist with the China Centre for Economic Research, a think tank. "(It shows) economic growth is slowing down."
The apparent weakening in industrial production could reflect a slightly worse outlook for exports, which are a key driver of factory output in China, according to economists. China's exports rose by just 16.8 percent in the first two months of this year, according to government data released earlier in the week. This compared with 41.5 percent growth in exports in the same period in 2007.
The problems in the US economy are said to be contributing to weakening exports, which saw China's trade surplus shrink to 8.56 billion dollars in February, a third of the figure a year earlier. Production of sedans reached 820,000 units in the first two months, an increase of 10.0 percent from a year earlier, the statistics bureau said.