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Consumption growth slowed down. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the total retail sales of consumer goods in April was 3569.9 billion yuan, up 2.3% year on year, lower than the expected 3.7%. From January to April, the accumulative total of social zero was 15602.6 billion yuan, up 4.1% year on year, and the growth rate slowed down month by month. Among them, the retail sales of consumer goods other than automobiles were 14139.6 billion yuan, up 4.3% year on year, 4.7 percent lower than the same period last year; The national catering revenue was 1736 billion yuan, up 9.3% year on year, 10.5 percentage points lower than the same period last year; The retail value of wholesale and retail trade above designated size was 5423.6 billion yuan, up 4.0% year on year, 2.7 percentage points lower than the same period last year; The retail value of automotive products was 1463 billion yuan, up 1.4% year on year, down 4.0 percent year on year. Although the growth rate of consumption has slowed down, the consumer confidence index was 89.4 as of March, which has continued to rise since July last year.
The employment situation remained stable and improved. The employment policy was effective in April, and the unemployment rate continued to decline. The unemployment rate in the national urban survey was 5.0%, lower than the expected 5.2%, 0.2 percentage points lower than the 5.2% in the same period last year, 0.2 percentage points lower than that in March, and maintained a downward trend for two consecutive months. Among them, the surveyed unemployment rate in 31 major cities and towns was 5.0%, down 0.1 percent month on month from 5.1% in March, and down 0.5 percent year on year from 5.5%. In terms of structure, the local household registration unemployment rate was 5.1%, down 0.2 percentage points month on month; The unemployment rate of migrant registered workers was 4.9%, down 0.2 percentage points month on month. The unemployment rate of migrant workers and other key groups declined significantly. The urban survey unemployment rate of migrant registered workers was 4.5%, down 0.5 percentage points from the previous month and 0.6 percentage points from the same period last year. The average weekly working hours of enterprise employees across the country was 48.5 hours, down slightly by 0.5 hour month on month and 0.3 hour from 48.8 hours in the same period last year, which was basically stable.
Investment growth continued to slow down. From January to April 2024, the national fixed asset investment (excluding farmers) was 14340.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.2%, lower than the expected 4.6%, 0.3 percent lower than the 4.5% in the first quarter, but 0.5 percent lower than the 4.7% in the same period last year. Among them, the investment in manufacturing industry increased by 9.7% year on year, 3.3 percentage points higher than the same period last year; Infrastructure investment (excluding electric heating, gas and water production and supply) increased by 6.0% year on year, 2.5 percentage points lower than the same period last year. State owned enterprises grew 7.4% year on year, down 2.0 percentage points year on year; Private investment increased by 0.3% year on year, down 0.1 percent year on year. On the whole, the growth rate of fixed investment has slowed down compared with the same period last year, especially in the infrastructure sector. Earlier, the central government required to postpone or stop the construction of projects with insufficient completion degree in order to further control the risk of local debt, and the role of infrastructure driving gradually weakened.
Property remains weak. From January to April 2024, the national real estate development investment was 3092.8 billion yuan, down 9.8% year on year, the sales area of new houses was 293 million square meters, down 20.2% year on year, and the sales volume of new houses was 2806.7 billion yuan, down 28.3% year on year. From January to April, the construction area, construction area and completed area of houses fell by 10.8%, 24.6% and 20.4% year on year respectively. New house sales fell further on the basis of last year's low base. Among them, the overall sales of top 100 real estate enterprises fell 12.9% month on month and 44.9% year on year in the first April, and the real estate data is still weak.
Social finance reflects weak investment demand. Recently, the People's Bank of China also released the financial data of the first four months. The total increase of social financing was 12.73 trillion yuan, 3.04 trillion yuan less than the same period last year. RMB loans increased by 944 million yuan, while the broad money supply (M2) increased by 7.2% year on year, the narrow money supply (M1) decreased by 1.4%, and the M1-M2 scissors spread expanded to 8.6 percentage points. Medium and long-term loans of households and enterprises decreased by 51 billion yuan and 256.9 billion yuan respectively year on year. Social finance data still reflects weak investment demand.
We introduced favorable measures for real estate. On the whole, although the economic recovery continues, the data in April clearly showed signs of slowing growth. Real estate, investment and social zero sales are still weak, and stimulating demand remains the main challenge. Against the background of weak data, the government introduced a series of real estate stimulus measures, including the establishment of 300 billion yuan of affordable housing refinancing to buy back real estate inventory, the cancellation of the lower limit of the national loan interest rate policy for first and second homes, the reduction of 0.25 percentage points of the personal housing provident fund loan interest rate, and the reduction of the down payment ratio of first homes to 15% (second homes to 25%).
The market is looking forward to the real estate market rescue, and the real estate sector leads the rise. We can continue to focus on the leading real estate enterprises such as China Shipping and China Resources.
In the short term, the head private or joint-stock real estate enterprises such as Vanke, Longhu, etc. can be given appropriate attention.
Risk tip: the economic recovery is unstable and investment confidence is insufficient.
