The city also aims to maintain its consumer price index (CPI) increase within 3 percent compared to the prior year. The goals were released in the government work report delivered by the capital city's mayor Chen Jining at the ongoing fourth session of the 15th Beijing Municipal People's Congress.
As the city's per capita GDP grew from 18,000 U.S. dollars in 2015 to about 24,000 U.S. dollars in 2020, Beijing has become equivalent to a developed economy at an intermediate level. It plans to increase the figure to about 210,000 yuan (about 32,500 U.S. dollars) by the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), according to the report.
Previous data has shown that Beijing's GDP reached over 3.6 trillion yuan in 2020, up by 1.2 percent over the prior year at comparable prices. Its CPI during the same period went up by 1.7 percent year on year.
The municipal lawmakers convened their annual meeting on Saturday. Both the city's political consultative and legislative meetings, collectively known as Beijing's "two sessions," kicked off this week to discuss local economic and social development over the past year and make plans for the year to come.
South China's Guangdong Province, a major manufacturing hub in the nation, achieved 2020 GDP growth of 2.3 percent year-on-year against the headwinds that the export-oriented economy faced amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the province's governor said.
The province's GDP surpassed the 11 trillion yuan ($1.7 trillion) mark in 2020 for the first time, a jump from 7.5 trillion yuan in 2015, ranking it No.1 for the 32nd year among all Chinese provincial-level regions in terms of economic output, Guangdong's Governor Ma Xingrui said during the government work report delivered on Sunday.
The added value of the primary industry was 477 billion yuan, up 3.8 percent; that of the secondary industry was up 1.8 percent, and that of the tertiary industry was up 2.5 percent, data from the local statistics bureau showed.
Guangdong's 2020 GDP was equivalent to that of South Korea.
Business Confidence continues to improve, and is now at an almost 7 year high in the Manufacturing sector.
Business Confidence in the Service sector is some way behind Manufacturing, but still on a rising trend and at a level indicating the problems of Covid are being left behind.
The Sales Growth Index backs up the growing buoyancy of business confidence, with data relating to actual revenues as opposed to beliefs about the future. Both Manufacturing and Services Indexes show very positive numbers well above the 50 no growth line.
Unlike in the USA, where price movements are starting to look suspiciously like turning into renewed inflation, prices appear more under control in China, and indeed in the manufacturing sector are actually falling as production is ramped up.
However, the Staffing Levels Index does not suggest that recruitment levels are back to pre-Covid levels. As in the United Sates, it appears that the experience of Covid has left many companies still very cautious and as yet reluctant to recruit. ■