China's industrial output up 4 pct in first three quarters

BEIJING, Oct. 18 (Xinhua) -- China's value-added industrial output, an important economic indicator, went up 4 percent year on year in the first three quarters of this year, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Wednesday. This growth can be attributed to the accelerating recovery of the country's industrial production.

The growth was 0.2 percentage points faster than that in the first half of this year, according to the NBS.

In September alone, industrial output rose 4.5 percent year on year. The growth was the same from August, and 0.8 percentage points faster than July.

Industrial output is used to measure the activity of large enterprises each with an annual main business turnover of at least 20 million yuan (about 2.79 million U.S. dollars).

Among the three major sectors, namely, manufacturing, mining and the production and supply of utilities, the manufacturing sector's output showed the fastest growth, climbing 4.4 percent year on year in the first three quarters.

Equipment manufacturing logged outstanding expansion in the manufacturing sector, with its output up 6 percent year on year in the first nine months, 2 percentage points higher than the overall output growth of major industrial enterprises.

In a breakdown by ownership, the output of state-controlled enterprises and joint-equity firms climbed 4.6 percent and 4.8 percent year on year, respectively, while that for the private sector grew by 2.3 percent.

In terms of products, the output of solar cells, charging piles and new-energy automobiles soared 63.2 percent, 34.2 percent and 26.7 percent year on year, respectively.

The purchasing managers' index for China's manufacturing sector came in at 50.2 percent in September, bouncing back to the expansion zone, and up 0.5 percentage points from August, earlier data indicated.

Wednesday's data also showed that China's gross domestic product grew 5.2 percent year on year in the first three quarters of 2023.