Chinese President vows reforms to boost economy

PanARMENIAN.Net - China will reform to make its currency and interest rates more market-based, boost overseas investments and plough more state funds into industry as part of plans to keep GDP on track to double in size by 2020, President Hu Jintao said on Thursday, Nov 8, Reuters reported.

Hu also restated a commitment to targets that would double household incomes nationwide in a decade, in a speech prepared for delivery at the opening of China's Communist Party Congress. Hu is due to step down as party chief during the congress.

"We should firmly maintain the strategic focus of boosting domestic demand, speed up the establishment of a long-term mechanism for increasing consumer demand, unleash the potential of individual consumption, increase investment at a proper pace, and expand the domestic market," Hu's speech said.

"We should develop a multi-level capital market, take steady steps to make interest rates and the renminbi exchange rate more market-based and promote the renminbi's convertibility under the capital account in due course," it added.

China's leaders have, since the days of Deng Xiaoping's landmark reform program in the late 1970s, pledged to double the size of the economy every 10 years.

In fact, the economy has grown far faster, achieving an average annual increase of around 10 percent in the last three decades.

In the current five year plan that runs from 2011 to 2015, the government is aiming for an average annual increase in GDP of 7 percent. The specific target for growth in 2012 is 7.5 percent, implying room for the economy cool and still achieve the overall target. Growth in 2011 was 9.2 percent.