Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said on Friday that the government wouldn’t set an economic target for 2020, in a stark acknowledgment of the challenges facing the world’s second-largest economy as it continues to grapple with the uncertainties around the coronavirus pandemic, reported the Wall Street Journal.
The lack of an official growth forecast, the first time Beijing has omitted a numerical target since it began the practice in 1994, comes after China reported a 6.1% gain in gross domestic product last year—its slowest pace in nearly three decades, though within the targeted range of between 6.0% and 6.5%.
It also comes after a first quarter of 2020 in which China reported its first economic contraction in more than four decades, shrinking by 6.8% from a year earlier.
In an annual government report delivered at the opening session of the National People’s Congress, China’s largely ceremonial legislature, Li also said Beijing aims to keep consumer-price inflation at about 3.5% in 2020, higher than last year’s goal of around 3%.