China's economy likely to grow 6.7 pct in 2016: top economic planner

China's economy is expected to grow about 6.7 percent in 2016, a senior official with the country's top economic planner said Tuesday.

The economy is predicted to exceed 70 trillion yuan (about 10.1 trillion U.S. dollars) for 2016, an increase of 5 trillion yuan, Xu Shaoshi, minister in charge of the National Development and Reform Commission, said at a news briefing.

The estimate falls within the government target of between 6.5 and 7 percent for the year. In the first three quarters of 2016, the economy expanded 6.7 percent year-on-year.

Steady growth and the performance of new sectors have discredited predictions that China's economy will collapse or face a hard landing, and its growth rate is remarkable among major economies, he said.

Citing a report by the International Monetary Fund, he said that China is likely to remain the top engine of global growth by contributing 1.2 percentage points, or over 30 percent, of the world's economic growth in 2016, while the United States is expected to account for 0.3 percentage points.

China is confident and capable of maintaining a reasonable growth rate thanks to its economic structural reforms and emerging new sources of growth, Xu said.

A MORE SUSTAINABLE ECONOMY

As China adapts to a "new normal" of moderate-to-higher growth, it has tried to shift from an export- and investment-driven economy to one that is more sustainable and draws strength from consumption, services and innovation.

During the first three quarters of last year, the service sector accounted for 52.8 percent of value-added industrial output, 13.3 percentage points higher than secondary industry, while consumption accounted for 71 percent of the growth, up 13 percentage points, Xu said.

The economy is in better shape for cleaner development, with a five-percent drop of energy consumption per unit of GDP and continuous declines of major pollutant emissions, he added.

The latest sign of a warming economy came on Tuesday as the National Bureau of Statistics said China's producer price index, which measures costs for goods at the factory gate, increased 5.5 percent year on year in December 2016, the biggest gain since September 2011, marking the fourth straight month of increases.

STRUCTURAL REFORM PAYING OFF

Meanwhile, China's supply-side structural reform has delivered initial results in the past year and started to provide new impetus for economic growth, Xu said.

"China has met this year's target of reducing steel production capacity by 45 million tonnes and coal capacity by 250 million tonnes ahead of schedule," he said.