SHANGHAI: Shanghai’s economic growth in the first quarter was lifted by services and the real estate market, according to data from the Shanghai Statistics Bureau.
The city’s gross domestic product grew 6.7 percent year on year in the first three months of the year to 622.54 billion yuan (US$95.78 billion), 0.1 percentage points faster than the expansion in the same period last year. Its GDP growth was similar to the national economy, the data showed.
The city’s services output rose 11.5 percent to 439.76 billion yuan, contributing to over 70 percent of the local GDP for the first time.
The growth in the services sector also outpaced the national average by 3.9 percentage points.
The “exceptionally active” home market in the first quarter helped propel the city’s GDP amid abundant liquidity and supporting policies such as lowering the deed tax for qualified first home buyers, the bureau said.
New home sales by value jumped 97 percent to 108.86 billion yuan in the first quarter, nearly doubling the speed of growth in the first quarter last year, the bureau said.
But industrial output fell 4.1 percent to 161.62 billion yuan in the first quarter, reversing a 0.5 percent growth in the same period last year.
Zhou Zhenhua, head of the Shanghai Economic Association, said the city needs to promote industrial upgrading and enhance advanced manufacturing abilities to sustain economic growth.
Shanghai’s 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020) seeks to keep a steady manufacturing sector to contribute under 25 percent of the city’s economic output.
Shanghai’s retail sales rose 7.1 percent to 255.1 billion yuan in January to March, slower than the 7.8 percent growth last year. Fixed-asset investment rose 8.4 percent to 119 billion yuan, up from the 3.2 percent gain in the first quarter of 2015.
Investment in property jumped 12.3 percent, taking up two-thirds of the total spending in fixed assets.
