The National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference are about to be held, and a series of comprehensive plans for China's economic and social development this year will be announced during the conference. How to set the GDP growth target? How to exert fiscal and monetary policies? Several experts and scholars have made prospects and predictions around the main macroeconomic goals and tasks. The GDP growth rate target may still be around 5%. Among various macroeconomic targets and tasks, the most concerned is undoubtedly GDP growth rate. In the past two years, China's economic growth target has been set at around 5.0%. The actual growth rate in 2023 is 5.2%, and the growth rate in 2024 is 5.0%, both of which have successfully achieved the target. Several experts and scholars predict that the GDP growth target for 2025 may still be around 5%. Wen Bin, Chief Economist of China Minsheng Bank, stated that maintaining a growth rate of around 5.0% is necessary to reserve buffer space for long-term planning and provide economic support for short-term employment absorption. From a feasibility perspective, the potential growth level of China's economy is still above 5.0%, and the goal can be achieved by increasing policy countercyclical adjustments. From the perspective of long-term goals, China's per capita GDP will reach the level of moderately developed countries by 2035. Setting the GDP growth rate this year at about 5% can lay a solid foundation for the realization of long-term goals. Professor Wan Zhe from Beijing Normal University stated that in order to achieve the long-term goal of 2035, the average annual economic growth rate from 2021 to 2035 needs to reach 4.73%. Due to the increasing size of China's economy, the growth rate target is likely to be high at first and then low, so there is a high possibility that the GDP growth rate target for 2025 will still be around 5%; If estimated conservatively, it is between 4.8% and 5%. Before the Spring Festival, local two sessions were held intensively, and each province released local growth rate targets, which can be used to roughly calculate the national GDP target. The weighted target growth rate of local GDP in 2025 is about 5.26%, and it is expected that the probability of setting the national GDP growth rate target at around 5% in 2025 is high, which is consistent with 2024, "said Li Chao, Chief Economist of Zhejiang Securities. The deficit ratio is expected to increase to 4%. The Central Economic Work Conference held at the end of last year changed the description of fiscal policy from "positive" to "even more positive", sending a signal that fiscal policy will be more proactive in 2025. A more proactive fiscal policy will serve as the main force of macroeconomic regulation, mobilizing larger scale fiscal resources to increase expenditure intensity, accelerate expenditure progress, optimize expenditure structure, and expand local financial resources Lian Ping, president of Guangkai Chief Industrial Research Institute, said that by 2025, China will adjust its fiscal policy to "more active", and will achieve unprecedented breakthroughs in deficit ratio and deficit scale, treasury bond and local bond issuance scale, transfer payment scale, tax and fee reduction scale and other aspects. For a long time, the world's major economies have regarded the "deficit ratio not exceeding 3% and debt ratio not exceeding 60%" in the EU's "Mayo" as the so-called "safety line". But in recent years, many experts have expressed that this "safety line" is not absolute: 3% is an empirical data or rough prediction value, without economic theory as support. Luo Zhiheng, Chief Economist and Dean of the Research Institute at Yuekai Securities, believes that in the long run, we need to shift from "controlling the deficit+expanding special bonds" to making decisions based on the needs of the deficit and special bonds in a pragmatic manner, breaking the traditional constraint of a 3% deficit ratio as the warning line. Wang Qing, Chief Macro Analyst of Dongfang Jincheng, stated that it is expected that the deficit ratio determined in the 2025 government work report will be raised from 3.0% in 2024 to around 4.0%, which will increase the fiscal spending capacity by about 1.3 trillion yuan and send a clear signal of strengthening fiscal countercyclical adjustment. Lianping predicts that the fiscal deficit rate is expected to reach 4.0% or above by 2025, with a deficit size exceeding 5.5 trillion yuan; The scale of transfer payments from the central government to local governments is expected to exceed 11 trillion yuan, further consolidating the bottom line of grassroots "three guarantees"; The issuance quota of local special bonds is expected to reach over 4.5 trillion yuan, which will further expand the scope of investment and use as project capital; It is expected to increase the issuance of over 2 trillion yuan of ultra long term special treasury bond, and expand the scope of support to supplement the capital of large state-owned banks and people's livelihood consumption. The CPI target will become more realistic in 2024, as prices continue to operate at a low level, with the national Consumer Price Index (CPI) rising by 0.2%. If prices remain low, it may lead to a spiral decline in income and expenditure, requiring more proactive and effective regulatory policies to intervene. In the wording of the Central Economic Work Conference held at the end of last year, there was a mention of "reasonable price recovery", and the central bank's 2024 fourth quarter report on the implementation of China's monetary policy also proposed to "take promoting reasonable price recovery as an important consideration in grasping monetary policy and keeping prices at a reasonable level." However, it is intriguing that during the local two sessions at the beginning of this year, the target for CPI growth rate in the vast majority of provinces was set at around 2%, instead of around 3% last year. Based on this calculation, it is expected that the national CPI growth rate target will also be reduced from 3% to 2%. Does this change contradict the tone of 'reasonable price recovery'? Multiple analysts suggest that this is actually a more pragmatic goal setting. Wu Chaoming, Chief Economist of Caixin Financial Holdings, believes that lowering the price to "around 2%" does not mean relaxing the requirements for prices, but rather to match the actual growth rate level. The main goals of economic development proposed in the government work report are expected goals, not binding goals. The target for CPI increase proposed in the 2024 government work report is around 3%, with an actual increase of 0.2%. Xu Gao, Chief Economist of Bank of China International, stated in the 182nd issue of the China International Economic Exchange Center's "Economic Monthly Talk" that the CPI growth target may be lowered from 3% to 2%, which may mean that the constraint on this target has been strengthened. (New Society)