China's economic growth has seen a slow-down in the first quarter of 2008, compared with the same period last year. This came as the Chinese government is taking measures to prevent its economy from becoming overheated. Our reporter Wu Peng has the details.

Reporter:

The rate of China's economic growth in the first quarter of this year stood at 10.6 percent, 1 percentage point lower than the figure from the same period last year.

Li Xiaochao, spokesman for the National Bureau of Statistics, addressed a press conference held by the State Council Information Office on Wednesday.

"Facing the unprecedented snow disaster and the widespread subprime mortgage crisis, the Chinese government has taken measures to maintain steady and fast development of the country's economy."

According to official statistics, China grew at a blistering 11.9-percent during all of 2007, the fifth consecutive year that its annual economic growth has exceeded 10 percent.

Industrial production rose over 16 percent year-on-year in the first three months of 2008, nearly 2 percentage points lower than that from the same period of 2007.

Statistics also show that China's retail sales of consumer goods in the first quarter rose over 20 percent year-on-year to nearly 2,600 billion yuan, or about 360 billion U.S. dollars. The growth rate is about 6 percentage points higher than that of the same period in 2007.

Growth of domestic sales accelerated and volumes of both urban and rural consumption increased rapidly.

Li Xiaochao said the country's Consumer Price Index for the first quarter of this year stood at 8 percent. Although it's not easy to keep the CPI at 4.8 percent as mentioned in the government work report, the government should still be able to realize the goal. He detailed the reasons.

"China has pretty solid financial foundations, which plays an important role in increasing market supply and regulating the market. It will also further strengthen its support of agriculture. Plus, the country has abundant storage of food, and pork production has been restored this year."

Prices in some sectors have seen increases, such as for raw materials, fuels, power supply and housing. But it is believed that food prices contributed significantly to the rising CPI, as they make up about 33 percent of the inflation index.

Wu Peng, CRI news.