The Chinese economy will continue to grow rapidly in the remaining months of the year despite difficulties with excessive lending and an increasing trade imbalance, according to one the country's top statisticians.

While addressing the ongoing annual meeting of the Chinese Economists Society (CES) held in Shanghai, Qiu Xiaohua, director of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), said the country maintained double-digit growth in the added-value output of the industrial sector, investments, sales of consumer goods and foreign trade from January to May.

But Qiu cited huge bank loans as a worrying underlying problem and pointed out that behind the fast growth rate of 30.3 percent in investments during the first five months of the year the total amount of loans granted stood at 1.78 trillion yuan--equivalent to 71 percent of the year's loan quota.

By late May the country's trade surplus had shot up to US$64.8 billion --US$16.8 billion more than for the same period last year. Its foreign exchange reserve surpassed US$900 billion making the imbalance of payments position worse. 

In addition prices of manufactured goods and raw materials and of farm produce and necessities such as fertilizer made it very difficult for these industries to improve their incomes.

Despite these issues the country's revenue increased by 500 billion yuan (about US$61.65 billion) in the first five months of the year--an annual rise of 22.8 percent. The income of urban residents also increased by more than 10 percent.

The profits of industrial enterprises increased by 25 percent nationwide in the first five months of the year, noted Qiu. He added that 80 percent of the profits were concentrated in five major businesses ranging from petroleum, power, coal to non-ferrous metals with the remaining 20 percent being shared by enterprises engaged in more than 30 industry sectors.

The CES is a non-profit academic organization founded in 1985 in New York. They aim to promote market-based economic reforms and open-door policies in China, to expand academic exchanges between China and the rest of the world and to engage in scholarly studies of the country's economy.

(Xinhua News Agency July 4, 2006)