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Premier Wen urges more efforts to clinch recovery

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-07-10 21:34

BEIJING: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said Friday that industrial consolidation, greater household consumption, technical innovation and energy efficiency would pave the way for the country's long-term development.

He told a gathering of economists and business people in Beijing that greater efforts should be made in these areas if China was to move beyond the present critical stage, when the country's economy was beginning to recover steadily.

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Unemployment would remain a problem in the near-term due to the lingering effects of the international financial crisis, said Wen.

Some industries and companies were struggling to survive, and excessive industrial capacity and fiscal deficit problems were significant, said Wen.

China's GDP growth slowed to 9 percent in the third quarter of 2008, then slumped to 6.8 percent in the fourth quarter and further to 6.1 percent in the first quarter of 2009.

On July 1, the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index of Chinese stock market for the first time since June 11 last year climbed above 3,000 points, marking a 65-percent rise of the index during the first half.

Late in June, the National Bureau of Statistics said the slowdown in the world's third largest economy had bottomed out and it was expected to grow about 8 percent in the second quarter.