U.S., WASHINGTON, April 18. China needs to look at domestic sources for growth, said the Managing Director of IMF Kristalina Georgieva during a briefing on the Global Policy Agenda held as part of the IMF Spring Meetings in Washington, Trend reports.
“I had an opportunity to visit China and discuss with Chinese leadership how they think about growth prospects for the country and also reflect on what we have learned about China. And here are my main takeaways. First, China is on a fork in the road. China has to define growth strategies for the future. Yet China has been based on a particular set of policies over the last decades, on export-oriented growth. But now, time has come to look at domestic sources for growth,” she said.
Georgieva noted that IM sees three important opportunities for China.
“Number one, to shift the economy more towards domestic consumption. It is actually in line with what China is aspiring the dual circulation economy. It would take giving consumers more confidence and offering them more services, and more things to buy. We know that the healthcare services in China can expand quite significantly,” she noted.
Secondly, the IMF managing director pointed out that the reforms in China that have served the country well continue to be needed.
“And last but not least there are some problems right now and how they are solved would have implications for China's growth. The most obvious example is the property sector. People in China rely on their homeownership as a way of saving when prices there, but these savings go down when prices of real estate go down. That affects consumer confidence. And so clearing up the problems in the sector more resolutely would certainly help China,” Georgieva added.
The Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group kicked off on April 15.
The main ministerial meetings and events will take place April 17-19 with other events and activities taking place during the week, April 15-20.
At the heart of the gathering are meetings of the joint Development Committee and the IMF's International Monetary and Financial Committee, which discuss progress on the work of the World Bank Group and the IMF.
The Spring Meetings bring together central bankers, ministers of finance and development, parliamentarians, private sector executives, representatives from civil society organizations and academics to discuss issues of global concern, including the world economic outlook, poverty eradication, economic development, and aid effectiveness.