BEIJING: China's economy sank in the latest quarter as a deceleration in construction and curbs on energy use affected its recovery from the Covid pandemic. While the Asian country showed considerable growth at the start of the year, economic progress slowed down as months passed.

China's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 4.9 percent in the third quarter, down from 7.9 percent in the second, confirming the slowdown of the world's second-largest economy which was under pressure from the crisis-hit property sector, curbs on energy and tardy recovery from the Covid. Early to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, China's economy in the first few months this year staged impressive recovery but caught up in numerous headwinds, including a property sector slump, power crisis, increasingly weak consumer sentiment and soaring raw material costs.

China’s GDP in the third quarter (Q3) grew 4.9 percent year on year, slower than the growth of 18.3 percent in Q1 and 7.9 percent in Q2. The Q3 belied surveys of predicting five percent growth. The country's gross domestic product (GDP) expanded 9.8 percent year on year in the first three quarters, putting the average growth for the period in the past two years at 5.2 percent, according to the data released from the National Bureau of Statics.

Releasing the Q3 data, the spokesman of the NBS Fu Linghui said that consumption contributed around 64.8 percent to China's economic growth in the first three quarters of the year. "We must note that the current uncertainties in the international environment are mounting and the domestic economic recovery is still unstable and uneven," Fu said.

China's GDP expands 9.8 pct in first three quarters

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