China says 'good foundations' for growth

Economic data for the first eight months of the year shows that China has created a "good foundation" to realise its goal of eight percent growth for 2009, a government spokesman said Friday.

"The data from January to August has laid a good foundation for realising the eight percent economic growth target for the full year," Li Xiaochao, a spokesman for the National Bureau of Statistics, told a press conference.

In further developments official data has shown that consumer prices in the country fell further in August while government-funded investment picked up slightly.

The consumer price index, the main gauge of inflation, fell 1.2 percent in August compared with the same month a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement.

August's inflation figure was the seventh consecutive monthly decline, and compared with a 1.8 percent decrease in July.

The statistics bureau said also that China's industrial output expanded by 12.3 percent in August from a year earlier, compared with a 10.8 percent expansion in July.

Investments in urban fixed assets rose 33 percent in the first eight months of the year, on a par with growth of 32.9 percent in the January-July period.

Retail sales, the main measure of consumer spending, rose 15.4 percent in August compared with the same month last year, the government said.

In July, the figure was up 15.2 percent from a year earlier.

The Chinese government sees consumer spending as a key factor in boosting the economy.