"Business activities in the property market have stabilized at low levels but stayed within the contractionary area, suggesting overall activities remained sluggish"
- China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing
An official data of China's in non-manufacturing sector showed that business activity declined to the lowest level in eight months in September, as an escalating property market slowdown further undermine economy growth and adding pressure on the government to step up stimulus. The non-manufacturing PMI index, which covers services including retail, aviation and software as well as real estate and construction, dropped to 54.0, down from 54.4 recorded a month earlier, according to the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing. Most components of the index fell, with the new-orders subindex sliding to the red territory of 49.5 from 50.0. The subindex for the services sector went down to 52.5 in September from 53.6 in August, and subindexes for sectors including property, aviation and water transportation were all below the 50-mark threshold. However, the gauge measuring construction activities rose to 60.2 from 57.7, the federation said. Both the Australian and New Zealand Dollars held early weakness after disappointing services index reading. The reading indicates a property slump is impairing services industries, which had been among the robustly performing areas of China's economy this year. After industrial output growth slowed to a five-year low in August and investment growth moderated, a slowing expansion of services adds a further hurdle to the government's gross domestic product goal. China's official manufacturing PMI was at 51.1 in September, unchanged from August, the federation said Wednesday.
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