China's GDP on target with 6.7% growth in third quarter

China's GDP grew 6.7 percent in the third quarter, same level compared to the first half of the year, still within the annual growth target range of 6.5 to 7 percent, official data showed on Wednesday.

On a quarterly basis, the economy increased 1.8 percent from the second quarter.

"Despite the downward pressure, Chinese economy is operating within reasonable range," said Sheng Laiyun, spokesperson for the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). "Efforts to implement structural reforms have taken effect."

"Some promising signs have appeared in the industrial sector," added Sheng.

GDP expanded 6.7 percent year on year in the first three quarters of 2016 to reach 52.997 trillion yuan ($7.87 trillion).

In the first three quarters, thanks largely to strong performance in the high-tech and equipment manufacturing sectors, China's value-added industrial output increased by 6 percent, the same level compared to the first half.

Industrial output is used to measure the activity of large designated enterprises with annual turnover of at least 20 million yuan.

In the first eight months, profits of industrial enterprises of above designated size stood at 4.05 trillion yuan, up by 8.4 percent compared to the same period last year, 2.2 percentage points higher than the first half.

The data was released after the producer price index, which gauges factory-gate prices, rose by 0.1 percent year-on-year in September, for the first time in nearly five years.

Consumers contributed a staggering 71 percent to economic growth in the first three quarters, up 13.3 percentage points on the same period last year, while energy consumption per unit of GDP dropped 5.2 percent.

Sheng said China is on the right track to implement five key tasks of supply-side reform and has achieved "fruitful results," but more efforts are needed to upgrade economic structure to ensure that the nation is able to achieve the annual growth target.

The structure of industry and demand continued to improve in the first three quarters. Wednesday's data showed the added value of the tertiary sector accounted for 52.8 percent of the country's GDP, up 1.6 percentage points year on year.  

Agricultural production remained stable with 139.26 million tonnes of summer grain output, the second-best seasonal performance in history, with expectation of a good harvest this autumn.

Retail sales of consumer goods grew 10.4 percent year on year in the first three quarters this year, accelerating from the 10.3 percent growth posted in the first half of the year, on the back of robust online sales.

Fixed-asset investment (FAI), which includes capital spent on infrastructure, property, machinery and other physical assets, grew 8.2 percent in the first three quarters year-on-year, though slowed by 0.8 percentage points compared with the first two quarters.

September FAI growth accelerated to 9 percent year on year, compared with 8.2 percent in August.

Investment in the property sector rose 5.8 percent year on year in the first nine months of 2016, higher than 5.4 percent posted in the first eight months, and 5.3 percent posted for the January-July period.

Xinhua contributed to this story