(Yicai) Nov. 10 -- Sentiment around China’s economic outlook remains above the boom-bust threshold for the third straight month in November, despite softening for the second month in a row, a survey of chief economists by the Yicai Research Institute showed.

The Yicai Chief Economist Confidence Index slipped to 50.1 this month from 50.3 in October, according to the poll of 13 economists released yesterday. A reading above 50 indicates optimism.

The economists indicated that the roll-out of new policy-based financing instruments and the use of remaining debt-issuing quotas by local governments should help reinforce the recovery.

The economists expected the consumer price index to have risen 0.8 percent in October from a year earlier, marginally above the 0.7 percent increase announced by the National Bureau of Statistics yesterday. They predicted a 5.4 percent jump in the producer price index, below the official 5.7 percent rise.

Their average forecast for cumulative fixed-asset investment was for a 7 percent year-on-year decline, narrowing from the 7.2 percent contraction officially recorded for the previous month.

The economists also projected that retail sales of consumer goods rose 0.9 percent from a year earlier, slowing from the official 1.1 percent increase in September. Industrial value-added output was forecast to grow 5.3 percent, compared with a 5.5 percent jump in the previous month.

They expected China's trade surplus to have shrunk to USD121.8 billion from a year ago, compared with the actual USD105.3 billion announced by the NBS today. The surplus was USD133.5 billion in September.

New Chinese yuan-denominated loans likely fell to CNY95.6 billion (USD14.3 billion) in October from the officially reported CNY1.08 trillion (USD161.9 billion) in September, according to the survey.

The average forecast for total social financing, a broad measure of credit in the economy, was for CNY1.3 trillion in October, down from the CNY3.6 trillion announced by the People's Bank of China for September.

Broad money supply, or M2, probably grew 7.2 percent, matching September's official rate.

The economists see little prospect of a change in loan prime rates or the reserve requirement ratios for large financial institutions over the coming month.

On the currency front, they anticipate the yuan's central parity rate to be around CNY6.69 per US dollar by the end of November. Their year-end forecast was for CNY6.67 per dollar, slightly weaker than the CNY6.66 projected in the previous month's survey.

Editor: Emmi Laine