Guangzhou (JLC), May 19, 2025--China's key economic indicators suggested that the economy maintained steady growth in April, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
China's value-added industrial output – a gauge of activity in the manufacturing, mining and utilities sectors – grew 6.1% year on year and 0.22% month on month in April, figures released by the NBS showed. In January-April, the industrial output grew 6.4% from a year before.
The service sector continued to improve, with the service production index rising 6.0% year on year last month, the NBS said. In January-April, the service production index mounted 5.9% from the same period last year.
Retail sales of goods, a key measurement of consumer spending, gained 5.1% year on year to 3.72 trillion yuan last month, the NBS data showed. Compared with March, this figure was 0.24% higher. In the first four months, China’s retail sales of goods climbed 4.7% to 16.18 trillion yuan.
Fixed-asset investment – a gauge of expenditures on sectors including infrastructure, property, machinery and equipment – increased 4.0% from a year earlier to 14.70 trillion yuan in January-April.
In yuan terms, the total value of imports and exports of goods stood at about 3.84 trillion yuan in April, up 5.6% year on year. Among them, exports grew 9.3% to 2.27 trillion yuan, while imports went up 0.8% to 1.57 trillion yuan.
In January-April, the total value of imports and exports of goods stood at around 14.14 trillion yuan, up 2.4% from the same months last year. Among them, exports rose 7.5% to 8.39 trillion yuan, while imports fell 4.2% to 5.75 trillion yuan.
The surveyed urban jobless rate came in at 5.1% in April, down 0.1 percentage points month on month, according to the NBS. In January-April, the urban unemployment rate averaged 5.2%, stable year on year.
