By Xie Fang
"The global economic growth will remain robust at 3.1 percent in 2018 before slowing gradually over the next two years," said the World Bank in the latest edition of its flagship report named the Global Economic Prospects which was published on Tuesday.
The World Bank indicated in the report that the global economic slowdown in the near future would be the result of a deceleration of the economic growth of developed countries as well as a slower recovery in major emerging markets.
When it comes to the region of East Asia and Pacific, the World Bank forecast that the economic growth in the region would ease from 6.3 percent in 2018 to 6.1 in 2019, which it believed reflected a slowdown in China that would be partly offset by a pickup in the rest of the region.
Despite the gradual slowdown of China's economic growth, the World Bank pointed out in an earlier report that with its GDP growing by 6.9 percent in 2017 and 6.8 percent year on year in the first quarter of 2018, the Chinese economy remained resilient.
The World Bank noted that consumption continued to be the primary driver of China's economic growth. And as the country becomes less dependent on exports, its current account balance continues to fall.
Meanwhile, the investment growth has rebounded from the lows in 2017, particularly in the private sector. The World Bank suggested that the efficiency of allocation rather than the speed of growth was China's main investment challenge.
What's more, China's "new economy" sectors are becoming a more prominent source of growth as software and IT services are rising at double-digit rates and contributed 1.1 percentage points to the growth in the first quarter of 2018.
The World Bank also highlighted China's effort to curb the level of corporate debts which stabilized below 160 percent of GDP in 2017 as the authorities were determined to guard against major financial risks.
Among the factors affecting China's economic growth in the second half of 2018, the World Bank saw the rising trade tensions between China and the U.S. as one of the main risks to China's economic outlook.
