China Economic Watch: Industrial Output Sees Slower Expansion; Chinese Banks Operate with 2.8pps Rate Gap

Industrial Output Sees Slower Expansion
China's value added industrial output expanded 9.3% year on year in April, where the growth of light industries was 10.3% and the growth of the heavy industries was 8.9%, the National Bureau of Statistics said. Output from state-owned industrials was up 4.3% and output from non mainland-funded industrials was up 5.7%. All growth rates were slower than in March.

Fixed Asset Investment Up 20% Jan-Apr
Fixed asset investment in China rose 20.2% year on year to ¥7.56 trillion in the first four months of 2012; the rate was 0.7 percentage points slower than in the first three months, the National Bureau of Statistics said. Fixed asset investment in the primary sector was up 40.7% to ¥166.6 billion; fixed asset investment in the secondary sector was up 24.2% to ¥3.38 trillion; fixed asset investment in the tertiary sector was up 16.4% to ¥4.02 trillion.

PPI Continues to Fall
China's producer price index declined 0.7% in April from a year ago, faster than the 0.3% drop recorded in March, the National Bureau of Statistics said. The continuous drop gives more room to stimulate the nation's slowing economy.

Chinese Banks Operate with 2.8pps Rate Gap
Chinese banks profited from an average 2.8-percentage-point interest rate gap in 2011, the central bank said, adding that the level was close to the international average. The nation's commercial lenders reported a combined ¥1.04 trillion net profit last year, up 36.3% from 2010.

China Orders Local Control Over Foreign Auditors
China has instructed the big four auditors to hand over control of their Chinese operations to local partners by the end of the year and put a Chinese citizen at the top within three years, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing the Ministry of Finance. No more than 40% of partners at Ernst & Young, KPMG, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and PricewaterhouseCoopers can have gained their qualification as a certified public accountant from overseas. That number can't exceed 20% by the end of 2017, according to the guidelines. The new rules, which will apply to both partners and managing partners, will give local partners a majority of votes in the new partnership.

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