A senior Chinese official said here Thursday that the negative impact on the country's national economy by the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) started to show symptoms in the second quarter of this year.
Yao Jingyuan, the spokesman and chief economist of China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), briefed reporters in a press conference on Thursday that the growth rate of China's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) dropped to 6.7 percent in the second quarter, 3.2 percentage points lower than that in the first quarter.
The growth rate of the tertiary industry only climbed 0.8 percent, down 6.1 percent of that of same time last year, Yao added.
The NBS statistics showed that sectors of passenger transportation, catering, social service and tourism are hardest-hit ones by the SARS epidemic.
Passenger transportation volumes dropped 23.9 percent during the time, and the air passenger transportation volume shrank almost half, said the NBS statistics.
The NBS also reported a sharp decrease of the growth rate of the domestic sales, adding that the retail sales of consumption items only increased 6.7 percent, 2.5 percent lower than that of the first quarter.
(Xinhua News Agency July 17, 2003)
