China revises first quarter economic growth figure downwards to 9.4 percent

China has revised downwards the growth rate of its economy in the first quarter to 9.4 percent from 9.5 percent, or 3.1319 trillion yuan (378 billion US dollars), the National Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday.

According to the bureau's preliminary assessment, released last Friday, China's GDP (gross domestic product) grew by 9.5 percent to 3.1355 trillion yuan in the first quarter, and the growth rate was 0.3 percent lower than a year earlier.

The bureau deals with GDP growth in three steps -- preliminary assessment, preliminary verification and final verification, a practice which began in 2003.

According to the result of preliminary verification, the industrial value added for the first quarter this year was revised down by 4.8 billion yuan, with the growth rate dipping by 0.4 percentage points, while the quarterly value added for transport, storage and post and communications sectors was increased by 1.2 billion yuan, or 0.6 percentage points in growth rate.

Because of this, the growth rate of the secondary industry dropped by 0.2 percentage points in the first quarter, and that of the tertiary industry increased by 0.1 percentage points.

Source: Xinhua