Soros Says China Growth Slowing on Consumption Share Drop
Billionaire investor George Soros said China’s growth is slowing because household spending as a percentage of the world’s second largest economy is waning.
“The growth model which has worked is running out of steam because consumption as a percentage of GDP has fallen” to one- third of output from half, Soros said at a National Association for Business Economics conference in New York today. Central bankers “will have to modify the growth model and somehow allow the household sector to have a bigger share of the total.”
China’s economy expanded 7.6 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, the least in three years. The IMF this month cut its estimate for China’s 2012 growth to 7.8 percent, which would be the weakest pace since 1999, from 8 percent.
Soros said the unprecedented actions global central banks have taken to stimulate growth are necessary to “prevent a depression,” yet the “big open question” is whether they can exit the stimulus programs when the economy rebounds without spurring inflation. The programs include three rounds of so- called quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank holding its main rate at a record low 0.75 percent.
“They are engaged in a very delicate two-phase maneuver,” Soros said. “First is to increase the quantity of money available and then eventually they’ll have to reduce it when the economy resumes a faster rate of growth.”
“It’s conceivable that it can be done but it hasn’t yet been done,” Soros said. “Until then the possibility that eventually you could have a much greater inflation at some point is a very real one.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Jeff Kearns in New York at jkearns3@bloomberg.net; Whitney Kisling in New York at wkisling@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chris Wellisz at cwellisz@bloomberg.net
Soros Fund Management LLC. Founder George Soros
Namas Bhojani/Bloomberg
George Soros, founder of Soros Fund Management LLC.
George Soros, founder of Soros Fund Management LLC. Photographer: Namas Bhojani/Bloomberg
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