CRI听力:IMF's Lagarde: China's Slowdown is "Healthy"

Speaking to reporters as part of the IMF and World Bank's current meetings in Lima, Peru, IMF chief Christine Lagarde says suggestions the Chinese economy may be at a point of crashing are misplaced.

Lagarde says its the IMF's belief the slowdown is mostly because of the current economic shift in China away from export-led growth to a more consumer-driven model.

"A growth model that is no longer based on either massive export relative to domestic massive investment projects as opposed to consumption is a good transition."

Lagarde is also praising the Chinese government for taking the steps to rebalance the economy, saying a more sustainable growth model is welcome, even if there are bumps along the way.

The IMF is currently forecasting GDP growth in China for this year to come in at 6.8-percent.

But at the same time, its downgraded its forecast for global economic growth this year to 3.1 percent.

Deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Zhu Min, who is also in Lima for the meetings, says structural reforms are key if emerging markets hope to maintain sustainable growth.

Today, in the whole world, although we all operate under the potential growth, we have negative output gap, but we don't have very much aggregated demand policy space, we don't have a fiscal policy, we don't have monetary policy space. So we all have to move to supply side policy as the structural reform. On the product market reform, pension level market reform, investing in education, investing in the smart SMEs, innovational companies, I think all those things will be able to support long-term sustainable growth for emerging markets."

Zhu Min notes the service sector in China outperformed the industrial sector for the first time last year.

But at the same time, the IMF is also calling on the Chinese government to do more to internationalize the Chinese currency.

Deputy director Zhu Min says this is a key step in having the renminbi added to the IMF's Special Drawing Rights basket.

"So this, as they review, will make it clear, we only review the RMB. We will not review something else, whatever the other currencies. This is clearly, say we pay attention on RMB issues and we're still in the process. It's still a very much data driven process. We try to collect all the data to see whether the RMB meets all these criteria."

The Special Drawing Rights basket is a collection of international currencies the IMF uses establish exchange rates.

Its currently dominated made up of the US dollar, the Euro, the British Pound and the Japanese Yen.

A number of countries use that basket as a reference guide for their own currency exchange rates.

Chinese authorities are hoping the addition of the renminbi to that basket will create more confidence in the Chinese currency.

Though many had expected the Renminbi to be added to the IMF's SDR basket this year, its expected that move is now likely to take place sometime next year at the earliest.

For CRI, I'm Min Rui.