BEIJING: A key meeting of the Communist Party of China pledged on Tuesday to step up macroeconomic support in the second half of this year, with greater focus on expanding domestic demand, cultivating emerging sectors and widening opening-up in a bid to meet the nation’s annual growth target for 2024.
The economic priorities were set out as the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held a meeting to analyze the performance of the world’s second-largest economy.
Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, presided over the meeting, two weeks after the third plenary session of the 20th CPC Central Committee adopted wide-ranging policy measures to forge ahead with the nation’s reform and opening-up drive.
According to a statement issued after the meeting, the CPC leadership highlighted challenges including mounting negative factors from the external environment, lack of effective demand domestically, lingering risks in key sectors and “growing pains in the transition between old and new growth drivers”.
“We must enhance our awareness of risks and worst-case scenarios, come up with proactive responses, maintain strategic resolve, and strengthen our confidence in development,” the statement said.
The policymakers required fully leveraging the role of economic structural reform as the spearhead and promptly introducing a series of reform measures that are “mature, effective and achievable”.
They emphasized the need to encourage entrepreneurship and move faster to help Chinese companies become world-class through reform, innovation and fair competition.
More effective macroeconomic policies must be consistently carried out, focusing on the issuance and use of special-purpose bonds, improvement of the fiscal expenditure structure and financial support for the real economy, the statement said, adding that the exchange rate of the renminbi should remain generally stable at an adaptive, balanced level. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
