China’s annual session of the National People’s Congress (NPC) last week set an annual economic growth target that – at ‘above 6 per cent’ – looks conservative to many and, as such, it is likely that the country’s demand for oil will be significantly higher than is implied in the growth figure. “The soft economic growth target is a really low bar considering that annual growth prints will be boosted by favourable base effects,” Eugenia Victorino, head of Asia strategy for SEB in Singapore told OilPrice.com last week. “China’s GDP growth is likely to come in around 15-17 per cent year-on-year [y-o-y] in Q1…and we expect output to rise by 8.0 per cent year-on-year this year,” she added. Having recovered from the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 much quicker than any other major global economy, China is now in a position to scale back its wide-ranging policy […]