BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- China's upcoming economic data for April is expected to further improve on recovering production and demand, institutional analysts said.
The industrial output is projected to reverse its contraction with a year-on-year increase of 0.8 percent in April, Huang Wentao, an analyst with the China Securities, said in an interview with the Economic Information Daily.
Li Chao, an analyst with the Zheshang Securities, forecast a 1-percent rise in industrial output, after seeing several indicators for April improving from the previous month and approaching or exceeding the levels of the previous year.
The year-on-year fall in coal consumption for power generation narrowed in April while the rate of operation for blast furnaces rose further from March, Huang noted.
On the demand side, consumption is getting better as more shopping malls reopen and consumers spend more when going out.
Li projected a 7.6-percent year-on-year contraction in the retail sales of consumer goods in April, narrowing from a 15.8-percent decline in March.
Analysts were optimistic about the country's auto consumption. Thanks to unleashed pent-up demand and encouraging policies, automobile sales increased by 4.4 percent year on year to 2.07 million units in April, ending a contraction streak over the past 21 months, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.
"Consumption is in the process of gradual recovery. The release of consumption demand depends on the stimulation of pro-consumption policies in the short term, and on higher expected income from economic and job recovery in the medium and long term," said Zhang Jiqiang, an analyst with Huatai Securities.
Investment, especially that in the infrastructure sector, is expected to recover at a faster pace as construction companies have largely got back to work in March and been well funded.
Improving signs could already be seen from several leading indicators such as the purchasing managers' index for civil engineering, steel demand and the sales of excavators, Zhang noted.
China's statistics authority will release data on retail sales of consumer goods and industrial output on Friday. Enditem
