(Yicai) March 18 -- The Chinese economy got off to a good start this year with the main economic indicators for January and February indicating strong growth, laying the foundation to achieve the government’s growth target of around 5 percent this year, according to the latest data.

The added value of the nation’s industrial enterprises above a designated size, which refers to those with an annual revenue of at least CNY20 million (USD2.8 million), jumped 7 percent in January and February from a year ago, a gain of 0.2 percentage point from December’s growth, according to the latest data released by the NBS today.

The total retail sales of consumer goods expanded by 5.5 percent over the period, which was a slowdown of 1.9 percentage point from December. While fixed assets investment climbed 4.2 percent year on year, an increase of 1.2 percentage point from last year’s growth.

The Chinese government usually releases combined economic data for January and February to account for the impact of the long Spring Festival holiday falling in different months each year.

The economy was running steadily in January and February, laying a solid foundation for the whole year, Liu Aihua, spokesperson for the National Bureau of Statistics, said today. There are more favorable factors boosting the economy and macroeconomic policies are taking effect, so this year’s economic growth goal of around 5 percent is achievable with enough effort, she added.

Major national economic indexes grew faster than expected in January and February, and manufacturing, services and investment expanded hand-in-hand for the first time in the past few months, making up for the difficulties in real estate investment, Pang Ming, chief economist of Jones Lang LaSalle China, told Yicai.

The country’s real estate market is still in the doldrums, though. Investment in real estate plunged 9 percent in the first two months year on year, but this is a narrowing of 0.6 percentage point from last year’s fall, the NBS said. The transaction value of new home sales plummeted 32.7 percent and the floor area sold dived 24.8 percent, it added.

Over 6,000 real estate projects have been added to the country’s new ‘whitelist’ property financing program that was rolled out in January, with over CNY200 billion (USD27.8 billion) lent by commercial banks as of the end of February.

China is in a crucial stage of economic recovery and is faced with many uncertainties and not enough demand, so the foundation for economic recovery should be further consolidated and future economic development trends remain to be seen, Liu said.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Kim Taylor