China’s vaccination plan could lift GDP growth to 9.3%

Bloomberg reports that Oxford Economics forecast that China’s ambitious plan to vaccinate 40% of its population by the end of June could pave the way for lifting the economy’s growth rate to 9.3% this year.

Business confidence and consumer spending will improve should China be able to achieve its targeted rate, which Oxford Economics estimates will require inoculating 10 million people a day -- twice the current pace.

This would translate into a 0.4 percentage point gain to the gross domestic product growth rate from Oxford Economics’s 8.9% baseline scenario, which assumes five to six million doses are administered per day, according to its report released Tuesday.

Household consumption this year could increase by 7% from its pre-Covid level in 2019, while export of tourism services will recover to about 50% of its 2019 level in the second half of the year, and imports of tourism services will recover around 70%. Fixed investment will also improve, the research institution said.

In a worse-than-expected scenario, where only 40% of population will be vaccinated by the end of the year, economic growth could end up 0.2 percentage points lower from the baseline case at 8.7%, the report said.