Securities Times:

PMI falls again in April

Yesterday, the National Bureau of Statistics and the Federation of Logistics and Purchasing released data showing that the official manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI) fell to 50.6% in April from 50.9% in March. Fell 0.3 percentage points, and a number of new orders, inventories and other indexes fell, new export orders fell to the line of growth and contraction, showing that manufacturing demand is still under pressure. Zhang Liqun, a researcher at the macroeconomic research department of the Development Research Center of The State Council, said that the slight drop in the PMI index in April indicates that the foundation for economic stabilization is not yet consolidated. "It is expected that there is a possibility of a slight downward trend in economic growth in the future. Efforts should be made to stabilize China's demand and make the recovery more sustainable."

Data show that in addition to the general index fell, major individual indexes also fell to varying degrees, among which, the new orders index fell by 0.6 percentage points, the new export orders index fell by more than two percentage points and fell below 50%, and the production index fell slightly by 0.1 percentage points. While the purchase price index fell sharply by 10.5 percentage points to a low of 40.1%.

Zhang Liqun pointed out that in terms of demand, the new orders index, the new export orders index and the backlogged orders index are all falling; From the inventory point of view, the inventory of finished goods and the purchase volume index are also declining. These developments suggest that lower order levels are starting to turn restocking into destocking. The sharp fall in the purchase price index in April also reflected a negative change in business expectations.

CAI Jin, vice chairman of the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing, said the weaker PMI indicates that the economy needs to strengthen its growth momentum.

Liu Ligang (Caiyuan), chief economist for Greater China at ANZ Bank, said that the PMI fell again, indicating that the overall economy is still continuing its previous weak recovery trend. Of course, bird flu may also affect the overall economic performance.

Nevertheless, the pace of economic restructuring has gradually accelerated. Judging from the performance of PMI since this year, there have been obvious changes in economic operation, and it is changing from the speed driven by scale expansion to the benefit supported by structural transformation and upgrading. Among them, the equipment manufacturing industry and high-tech industry have shown a positive development trend.

data show that in April, the new orders index of the equipment manufacturing industry reached more than 54%, and the fluctuation was small; The non-metallic mineral products industry rose significantly, rising by more than 4 percentage points, reflecting that investment demand such as infrastructure investment, enterprise equipment renewal and technological transformation investment maintained a good momentum.

"The relatively slow fiscal spending and investment is the most important reason for the slowdown, but it may also be a signal that the Chinese authorities are considering shifting their focus to solving structural problems and changing their investment-centric economic policy." Liu Ligang pointed out.

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