The economy in the nation's capital slowed last year in part because of the government's curbs on private cars, home sales and polluting industries, a municipal official said yesterday.
Last year, Beijing's year-on-year gross domestic product growth was 8.1 per cent, compared with national GDP growth of 9.2 per cent, according to Yu Xiuqin, deputy director of the municipal bureau of statistics.
Additionally, she said the city's population surpassed 20 million people by the end of the year, with 7.4 million migrant workers representing 37 per cent of the total.
The local government had no plans to relax its market-intervention efforts this year, Yu said.
As a result, the capital's GDP growth rate might fall this year like it did last year, 'if not slightly more', due to increasing uncertainties in the global market and rising costs domestically, she said.
And given that the city's per capita GDP had surpassed US$12,400, she said it would be unrealistic to expect Beijing to repeat the double-digit GDP growth rates seen in the years prior to the 2008 Olympics.
