China’s Manuf Gauge Declines to 49.8, Missing Estimate for 50.2
8:21 PM EST January 31, 2015
(Bloomberg) -- A Chinese manufacturing gauge sank to a more than two-year low in January, adding pressure on the government to stimulate an economy that last year expanded at the slowest pace since 1990.
The government’s Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to 49.8 in January from 50.1 in December, according to data released Sunday by the statistics bureau and the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing in Beijing. That missed the median estimate of 50.2 in a Bloomberg News survey of analysts and is below the 50 level that separates expansion and contraction.
China’s fiscal revenue increased the least since 1991 last year due to a property slump and declining factory profits, curbing scope to boost growth with government spending. That may leave the onus on the central bank to spur the economy.
“China’s economic downturn will continue in the first quarter and manufacturing activities will stay in a contraction,” Hua Changchun, a China economist at Nomura Holdings Inc. in Hong Kong, said before today’s data release.
The non-manufacturing PMI fell to 53.7 in January from the previous month’s 54.1, according to a separate report today from the NBS and the CFLP. Services made up 48.2 percent of the economy in 2014, up 1.3 percentage points from a year earlier.
The government’s manufacturing index was based on a survey of purchasing executives at 3,000 companies.
The Chinese economy grew 7.4 percent last year and 7.3 percent last quarter, according to an NBS release last month.
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