People’s Bank of China (PBoC) Vice Governor Yi Gang said Wednesday that the country is still on course to hit its growth target of around 8%, the Wall Street Journal reported. “The economy is going forward as the stimulus package has started working,” Yi said. A number of private forecasters have revised their GDP growth projections the release of first quarter economic data last week. Goldman Sachs increased its estimate for 2009 to 8.3%, up from 6%. The bank expects to see growth of 10.9% in 2010, up from its earlier estimate of 9%. UBS has revised its projection to 7.5% from 7% and Royal Bank of Scotland is now predicting 7%, up from 5%. CLSA is now targeting 7%, up from 5.5%, while Barclays Capital has gone from 6.7% to 7.2% and Morgan Stanley from 5.5% to 7%, Bloomberg reported. Writing in China Securities Journal, Fan Jianping, chief economist at the State Information Council, was less optimistic. He warned that it would take time for China to get rid of the excess manufacturing capacity exposed by the export decline and a rapid recovery in the short term is unlikely.
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