China\\\'s challenge is to learn to live with 7.0pc growth rate : WB

WASHINGTON, Jan 14 (PTI):  Accustomed to a sustained high growth rate for over 30 years, a major challenge faced by China is to learn to live with a growth rate of around 7 per cent, the World Bank has said on the world's second largest economy.
"China's challenge is learning to live with a growth rate of around 7 per cent. 7 per cent growth for a country that has grown so well over a 30-year period is actually very good performance," Kaushik Basu, World Bank Chief Economist and Senior Vice President, told reporters here yesterday.
He was speaking during a programme in which the bank released the latest issue "Global Outlook: Disappointments, Divergences, and Expectations Global Economic Prospects," which said that China is undergoing a carefully managed slowdown.
"China is still growing at a robust pace but continues on a path of gradual deceleration," said the report, which has estimated a Chinese growth rate of 7.4 per cent and forecasted
7.1    per cent in 2015, which drops further to 7 per cent in 2016 and 6.9 per cent in 2017.
"In 2012 and 2013, China maintained a growth rate of 7.7 per cent. China's other challenge comes from the fact that it is on the threshold of a structural change and it faces a little bit of what can be called a middle-income country hurdle when ones structure is changing from a huge amount of investment".
"It has to orient itself to a greater consumption economy, from mass production of goods at very cheap labour, it has to move on to the higher end of the production spectrum," Basu said in response to a question.