China's growth rate to exceed 7.5%: PBOC official

WASHINGTON - Chinese economic growth rate is expected to be above 7.5 percent this year, a senior Chinese central bank official said Thursday.

"I think for this year we're going to have certainly above 7.5 percent growth rate, maybe 7.6 percent something like that," Yi Gang, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, said at a seminar on the global economy hosted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in George Washington University.

A lot of people worried about the slowdown of Chinese economy, even a hard-landing situation, in the first half of this year, but economic data in the third quarter showed China's economy had already picked up, he said.

He added that the problems of shadow banking and local government financial vehicles have been under control.

The Chinese economy is entering a phase of medium-to-high rate growth, maybe at around 7 percent in the foreseeable future, still considered high from global standard, although it's slower than double-digit growth in the past decade, Yi explained.

China needs a stable global economy, including a robust economic recovery in the developed economies and other emerging ones that the Chinese economy is closely linked to, an orderly communicated tapering by the US Federal Reserve, as well as free trade and investment environment, he said.

Yi also urged the United States to deal with federal government shutdown and debt ceiling issues as soon as possible. "The market doesn't like uncertainty. We watch this drama very closely."

"I think they should have the wisdom to solve this problem as soon as possible," he added.

Last Tuesday, US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew told Congress that the federal government will reach its debt limit of $16.7 trillion by Oct 17, and failure to raise it would lead to a catastrophic default.

IMF chief Christine Lagarde warned Thursday that US failure to raise the debt ceiling would damage the US economy and the global one.

For the Chinese currency exchange rate reform, Yi told Xinhua that China would take a gradual manner, taking into account promoting market-oriented reform and maintaining market stability.

China did a better job than other emerging economies in terms of capital flows in the recent months, he said.