By Gina Lee

Investing.com – China’s industrial output in October, despite the latest wave of COVID-19 cases in the country and supply shortages.

According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the country’s GDP grew 3.5% in the past year. Investing.com forecasts a 3% rise in growth, and a 3.1% increase was reported for September.

The growth rate at 4.9% was also higher than the forecasts by Investing.com, which predicted a 3.5% increase. In September, the growth rate was 4.4%.

It remained unchanged at 4.9%

However, October’s growth of 6.1% was slower than the September 7.3% growth and forecasts by Investing.com predicting a 6.2% increase.

China’s manufacturing sector has slowed down in 2021 due to power shortages and higher raw material prices. According to Bloomberg, power supplies rose 11.1% from last year, which was a major constraint on China’s industrial production.

“The national economy was generally stable and maintained the trend of recovery,” the NBS said in a statement. “However, we must be aware that the international environment is still complicated and severe with many unstable and uncertain factors.”

Retail sales benefited from pre-sales ahead of the Single’s Day shopping festival, also, the National Holiday in October drove the catering and accommodation sales, NBS spokesman Fu Linghui said at a briefing.

Meanwhile, concerns about China’s property market remained, as property giants China Evergrande Group and Kaisa Group continue to steer towards looming defaults.

It is likely that the government will continue to impose curbs. This could result in slower growth for 2022. Also, GDP growth might slow down. According to Bloomberg, GDP growth will slow to 3.5% for the fourth quarter 2021 and hit 8% in 2021. It is forecast to weaken to 5.4% by 2022.

“Growth will likely weaken in the rest of this year,” said Zhang Zhiwei, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management Ltd. “The slowdown in the property sector continued, which is the key risk for the macro-outlook in the next few quarters.”