China’s GDP plummeted by 6.8 percent, its worst performance since 1976 the year of Cultural Revolution. Ever since the outbreak of the pandemic, country took unprecedented measures to fight the coronavirus pandemic that brought the world’s second largest economy to a standstill.
According to National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), China’s gross domestic product stood at 20.65 trillion yuan ($2.91 trillion approx) in the first quarter of 2020 amid the COVID-19 impact, down 6.8 per cent year.
On a slow mode, China’s economy grew by 6.1 per cent in 2019, the lowest annual growth rate in 29 years amid the bruising trade war with the US but it remained above the six per cent mark.
But the coronavirus which devastated China and the world ever since it broke out in Wuhan in December last year has dealt a major blow to the Chinese economy which was already in slowdown mode in the last few years due to steady shrinking of its exports markets.
The world’s second-largest economy is now limping back to normal with factories resuming production all over.
New data released by the NBS confirmed the slump due to the COVID-19 which was worse than predictions of minus 6.0 per cent from a survey of analysts.
The NBS data also showed that over the single month of March, the economy remained under huge pressure, with the industrial sectors, retail and fixed asset investment all shrinking again, following a collapse over the first two months of the year.
A breakdown of the data showed output of the service sector, which accounted for nearly 60 per cent of the total GDP, dropped by 5.2 per cent, while primary industry and the secondary industry saw a decline of 3.2 per cent and 9.6 per cent, respectively.
China’s retail sales of consumer goods, a major indicator of consumption growth, declined 19 per cent year on year in the first quarter of this year hit by the coronavirus outbreak, the NBS report said.