Industry sizzles while real estate sector slumps
Shanghai's GDP grew 6.9 percent in the first half of this year to about 1.39 trillion yuan ($206 billion), the Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau said Tuesday.
The city's economic growth is the same as China's GDP growth in the first six months of 2017, which was released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Monday.
"Shanghai's economy has been stable in general and has been better than market expectations," Tang Huihao, deputy director of the bureau, said at the briefing.
He noted that new economic momentum is aggregating in Shanghai and the industrial strength of the city is also improving.
According to Tang, industrial growth has been a highlight in Shanghai's economic performance in the first half of this year. During the period, economic activity by major industries in the city amounted to 1.601 trillion yuan, up 8.2 percent year-on-year, the fastest growth rate since 2012.
The six major industrial sectors in Shanghai, which are electronic information products, automobile manufacturing, petrochemical engineering, fine steel manufacturing, biological medicine manufacturing and complete equipment manufacturing, had a growth rate of 11.2 percent in total in the first half of this year.
Tang said that the industrial boost has been a result of government measures to stimulate and stabilize economic growth.
The Shanghai municipal government issued a guideline in May that consisted of 50 concrete measures to boost the real economy. Tang also noted that the city's economic growth has shown better coordination, as secondary industries were on the rise while the service sector shrank a little.
He said added value from secondary industries grew 6.6 percent in the first half, up from 1.2 percent in 2015, while the service sector grew 7 percent in the first half, down from 10.6 percent in 2015.
Tang noted that one reason for the falling service sector is that the city's reliance upon the real estate sector has been weakening amidst government measures to cool down the property sector.
The added value of the real estate sector in Shanghai slumped 17.5 percent year-on-year in the first half of this year, the statistics bureau said.
