China: Industrial Production drops 13.5 % in Jan-Feb

China

China’s economy suffered a huge impact from the novel Coronavirus, numbers for January and February revealed on Monday revealed.

Amid a widespread shutdown of manufacturing operations, industrial production – a measure of manufacturing, mining and utilities activity – declined 13.5 % over the first two months of the year, combined data for January and February showed, according to a South China Morning Post report.

This is the first decline on record, although ordinarily the data is released monthly. 

Retail sales, a key metric of consumption in the world’s second-largest economy, fell by 20.5 %. This was well below the median forecast of a group of analysts, conducted by Bloomberg, which predicted a 4.0 percent contraction.

Fixed asset investment – a device of expenditure on items including infrastructure, property, machinery and equipment – collapsed by 24.5 %, much worse than analysts’ predictions of minus 2.0 %. This was the first shrinkage on record.

As of last week, around 95 % of large companies outside the epicenter of the virus in Hubei province had reopened, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, while “about 60 %” of small to medium-sized firms had returned to work.