The Hong Kong government announced Friday that the city's economy saw further improvement in the third quarter, with real Gross Domestic Product growing 0.4percent over the second quarter.
The year-on-year fall in GDP in real terms narrowed to 2.4 percent from 3.6 percent in the second quarter.
With both domestic and external sectors likely to show further improvement in the fourth quarter, GDP for 2009 as a whole is now forecast to contract by 3.3 percent in real terms, up from the forecast drop of 3.5 percent to 4.5 percent in August.
Hong Kong government's economist Helen Chan Friday said further improvement in the domestic sector offset the drag from weak external demand.
Hong Kong's merchandise exports still declined notably year-on-year in the third quarter, although the pace of decline slowed distinctly toward the end of the quarter. Total exports fell 13.2 percent in real terms year-on-year in the third quarter. Total exports fell 13.2 percent in real terms year-on-year in the third quarter.
China's imports and exports fell 10.7 percent in October year on year, but monthly exports exceeded100 billion U.S. dollars for a fourth straight month this year, the General Administration of Customs announced Wednesday.
Imports stood at 86.8 billion U.S. dollars for October, a decrease of 6.4 percent compared with the same month last year; exports dropped 13.8 percent to 110.8 billion U.S. dollars.
From January to October, the country's imports and exports totaled 1.76 trillion U.S. dollars, down 19.9 percent compared with the same period last year.
Imports for the first 10 months were 798.13 billion U.S. dollars, down 19 percent year on year; exports declined 20.5 percent to 957.36 billion U.S. dollars.
The trade surplus for the first 10 months was down 27.2 percent at 159.23 billion U.S. dollars.
The EU was China's biggest trading partner for this period, though bilateral trade declined 18.7 percent to 292.42 billion U.S. dollars in value; the U.S. was second with bilateral trade at239.36 billion U.S. dollars, down 14.9 percent; Japan followed with bilateral trade down 19.3 percent at 182.34 billion U.S. dollars.
China's urban fixed-asset investment rose 33.1 percent in the first 10 months to 15.07 trillion yuan (2.21 trillion U.S. dollars), compared with the same period a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced Wednesday.
The growth rate was 5.9 percentage points higher than that in the same period of last year, but 0.2 percentage points lower than that in the first nine months, NBS spokesman Sheng Laiyun said at a press conference.
The NBS had no figure for the month of October.
China's new yuan-denominated loans in October were down 51 percent from September, the People's Bank of China, the central bank, announced Wednesday.
Growth of the new yuan loans slowed to 253 billion yuan (37.06 billion U.S. dollars) from September's 516.7 billion yuan (75.68 billion U.S. dollars), according to the central bank.
Yuan loans outstanding at the end of October were 34.19 percent higher than a year earlier, almost the same as September's reading of 34.2 percent.
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