"The data suggests that China's post-COVID boom is clearly over," said Carol Kong, economist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney.
Authorities are likely to roll out more stimulus steps including fiscal spending to fund big-ticket infrastructure projects, more support for consumers and private firms, and some property policy easing, policy insiders and economists said.
Most analysts say policymakers are likely to dole out modest supportive measures, instead of embracing any aggressive stimulus due to limited room and worries of growing debt risks, analysts said.
For June alone, China's retail sales grew 3.1%, slowing sharply from a 12.7% jump in May, the data showed.
Industrial output growth unexpectedly quickened to 4.4% last month from 3.5% seen in May, but demand remains lukewarm amid a bumpy post-COVID economic recovery.
Persons:
Carol Kong, Alvin Tan, Kevin Yao, Ellen Zhang, Joe Cash, Shri Navaratnam
Organizations:
National Bureau, Statistics, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Authorities, Asia FX, RBC Capital Markets, stoke, Thomson
Locations:
BEIJING, Shanghai, Sydney, China, Asia, Singapore