China’s property market continues to struggle and the surge of public consumption that was supposed to help keep the economy growing isn’t happening as planned. Instead it looks like things are slowing down both this year and next year. Yesterday the investment bank UBS Group AG downgraded its forecast for China.
With China’s economic momentum subdued since March amid the real estate downturn and a tight fiscal policy stance, the investment bank now expects gross domestic product to expand 4.6% in 2024, down from an earlier estimate of 4.9%. For next year, UBS sees growth at 4%, down from 4.6% previously.
The problem driving this is still the housing market. For many years, a construction boom kept China’s economy going. But the collapse of one of the country’s largest builders, Evergrande, revealed the industry had been operating like a Ponzi scheme, with the money from new…
