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Since December 2008, the growth rate of industrial production in China has started to rise again, financial institutions have sharply increased loan amounts and the growth of consumption has been accelerating. All these indicate that China's economy is showing signs of recovery.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the industrial production growth rate rose slightly in December 2008. During the same month, industrial added value from industrial enterprises above the designated size increased by 5.7 percent year-on-year, 0.3 percentage points higher than the previous month, but 11.7 percentage points lower than the same period of 2007. For the whole year of 2008, the industrial added value from industrial enterprises above the designated size (the enterprises with an annual income over 5 million yuan) increased by 12.9 percent, and decreased by 5.6 percentage points compared to the previous year.

In December 2008, China's total retail sales of consumer goods increased by 17.4 percent year-on-year. Among consumer goods, sales of automobiles, clothing and cosmetics all started to rise again. The month's automobile sales were especially strong with 644,000 cars sold, making December the month with the highest automobile sales. All of the above data indicate that the growth of consumption, represented by total retail sales of consumer goods, is accelerating.

Newly-added loans by the banking institutions started to pick up on all fronts starting in November. The newly-added renminbi loans in November reached 476.9 billion yuan and rose to 771.8 billion yuan in December, the second highest month-to-month growth since 2001.

Wen Jiabao, Premier of the State Council, disclosed at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 28 that during the first 20 days of January 2009, newly-added loans by China's banking institutions reached 900 billion yuan.

By the end of December 2008, all the outstanding loans denominated in local and foreign currencies in financial institutions stood at 32 trillion yuan, up by 17.95 percent year-on-year on a comparable basis. The renminbi-denominated outstanding loans exceeded 30 trillion yuan, up by 18.76 percent year-on-year on a comparable basis. The growth rate was higher than the end of the previous year by 2.66 percentage points. At the same time, commercial banks' non-performing loans declined to 568.18 billion yuan and the non-performing loan ratio dropped to 2.45 percent.