Thomas Heblin, deputy director of the Asia-Pacific Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said in an exclusive interview with Xinhua News Agency recently that as China optimizes and adjusts its epidemic prevention policy, China's personal consumption has further recovered and confidence in economic growth is increasing. The current resilience of China's economy lies in the high household savings rate, the boost of macroeconomic policies and the strong momentum of development. In the updated content of the World Economic Outlook Report released on January 30, the IMF significantly raised the forecast of China's economic growth this year to 5.2%, 0.8 percentage points higher than the forecast in October last year. The IMF expects that China's economy will continue to grow by 4.5% next year. Helbrin said that in the past three years, China's personal consumption has been more affected than investment, export and other fields, and has benefited most from the optimization and adjustment of epidemic prevention policies. This is particularly reflected in the service sector, such as the significant increase in the number of tourists during the Spring Festival. At the same time, due to the slight improvement of the global economic environment and the accumulation of household savings in China, it is expected that the consumption of Chinese consumers will increase significantly. Helbrin believes that the current data has shown that Chinese consumer confidence has increased and consumption has recovered. The population flow in the second half of December last year and the first three weeks of January this year was stronger than the IMF expected, and the increase in liquidity was one of the preconditions for the increase in consumption and one of the signs of confidence. Helbrin said that China's economic resilience is reflected in three aspects: first, the high level of household savings can play a buffer role; Second, the government has room for policy adjustment in order to respond under different circumstances; Third, the potential economic growth rate is high and the overall economic development momentum is strong. The updated content of the IMF World Economic Outlook Report raised the global economic growth forecast this year to 2.9% from 2.7% in October last year. Among the major economies, the economic growth of the United States is expected to be 1.4% and 1% this year and next, and that of the euro area is expected to be 0.7% and 1.6% respectively. Helbrin pointed out that the stronger growth of China's economy this year and next will help the global economic recovery, especially in the service sector. Compared with the past two years, the improvement of global tourism and aviation industry will be the biggest change in the short term. Helbrin said that increased consumption is expected to become an important source of growth for China's economy, and the current economic recovery is in line with the long-term balanced development trend of China's economy. Helbrin believes that taking a broad view of the medium and long-term development prospects of China's economy, accelerating structural reform, further opening up the market and promoting innovation will help to meet the challenges of demographic change trends and further improve the potential economic growth rate. (Xinhua News Agency)