China’s industrial production and retail sales rise less than expected in March

China’s industrial production and retail sales rose less than anticipated in March.

China’s industrial production grew by 4.5% year-on-year in March 2024, softer than a 7% growth in January-February combined and below market forecasts of 5.4%, marking the softest expansion in industrial output since last September, due to softer rises in all economic activities.

On a monthly basis, the industrial output edged down by 0.08%. For the first quarter of the year, industrial output expanded by 6.1%.

China’s retail sales rose by 3.1% year-on-year in March 2024, falling short of market forecasts of 4.5% and notably slowing from a 5.5% rise in the prior period, marking the 14th straight month of increase in retail trade but the softest gain since July 2023.

During the first three months of the year, fixed investment grew by 4.5%, the most in around 3 years and above the consensus of 4.3% and up from a 4.2% increase in the previous month.

The industrial capacity utilization rate in China declined to 73.6% in the first quarter of 2024 from 74.3% in the same period a year earlier. It was the lowest industrial capacity utilization rate since the first quarter of 2020.

A separate data showed, China’s surveyed unemployment rate edged down to 5.2% in March 2024, down from 5.3% in the previous month, in line with market expectations. Considering the January to March, the urban surveyed jobless rate averaged 5.2%, down by 0.3 percentage points over the same period last year.

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