Nomura cuts China’s GDP growth forecast to 2.7%

The Japanese financial company Nomura again revised downward its forecast for China’s GDP due to the negative impact on the economy of restrictive measures associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. According to CNBC citing Nomura’s statement, if according to estimates for August, China’s GDP growth in the third and fourth quarters of this year was forecast at 2.8%, now the company has lowered it to 2.7%.

Recently, restrictive measures have been tightened in several major Chinese cities, including Shenzhen and Chengdu. In general, the country now has a full or partial lockdown in 33 cities, in which a total of more than 65 million people live. Nomura estimates that about 12% of China’s GDP is now affected by measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus, up from 5.3% just a week ago.

“On August 17, when we lowered our forecasts for GDP growth for the third and fourth quarters, we did not expect the situation to deteriorate so much,” Nomura analysts say. Of particular concern, they said, is that “major pockets of COVID-19 continue to move from a few remote regions and cities of less economic importance to the country to provinces that are much more important to China’s national economy,” they said. at Nomura. Analysts note that the impact of COVID-19 on China’s GDP is rapidly approaching the peak values ​​that were in April and March this year during the period of hard lockdown in Shanghai. Then the weighted indicator of the impact of the pandemic on GDP exceeded 20%.

Alena Miklashevskaya