Coronavirus could trim 1 percentage point from China GDP growth

A woman wearing a protective facemask walks along the usually busy Bund waterfront along the Huangpu River overlooking Shanghai's financial district in the background. Markets across the Asia-Pacific were in the red on Monday (Feb 10) with investors worried about the impact of the China coronavirus outbreak on the global economy. - AFP

SHANGHAI: The coronavirus outbreak could trim China's full-year economic growth rate by as much as 1 percentage point in 2020, a senior member of a Chinese government think tank said in comments published on Tuesday.

Zeng Gang, vice chair of the National Institute for Finance and Development, compared the current crisis with the SARS epidemic of 2003, when China's growth declined by about 2 percentage points in a single quarter.