BEIJING - A state think tank expert has forecast China's GDP growth next year willexceed 8 percent and he projected consumer inflation increase to be higher than thisyear.
Lu Zhongyuan, deputy director of the Development Research Center under the StateCouncil, or China's Cabinet, said there is no doubt China's economy will grow by morethan 8 percent in 2013 and the government should focus more on promotingsustainable growth and containing imported inflation.
China's economy has bottomed out since June of the year, buoyed by the country'seconomic restructuring, innovation incentive and the market's self-stabilizing forces, Lusaid, adding these momentum will continue to drive up growth in the year ahead.
The country may face more severe imported inflation next year because of excessiveliquidity globally following the loose monetary policies implemented by some majoreconomies, he warned at an economic forum held Saturday in Beijing.
China's GDP rose 7.4 percent in the third quarter from one year earlier, slowing forseven consecutive quarters and marking the lowest growth in more than three years.Consumer price index, a main gauge of inflation, grew 2 percent in November, pickingup from October's 1.7-percent rise.
The National Bureau of Statistics is scheduled to announce the fourth-quarter GDPgrowth rate and that for the whole year of 2012 on January 18.
