SHANGHAI, July 3 (Xinhua) -- Despite problems of excessive lending and an increasing trade imbalance, the Chinese economy will maintain rapid growth in the remaining months of the year, according to the country's top statistician.

    While addressing the ongoing annual meeting of the Chinese Economists Society (CES) held in Shanghai, Qiu Xiaohua, director of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), said the country maintained double-digit growth in the added-value output of the industrial sector, investments, sales of consumer goods and foreign trade from January to May.

    But Qiu cited huge bank loans as a worrying underlying problem, pointing out that behind the fast growth rate of 30.3 percent in investments during the first five months of the year, the total amount of loans granted stood at 1.78 trillion yuan, equivalent to71 percent of the year's loan quota.

    By late May, the country's trade surplus shot to 64.8 billion U.S. dollars, 16.8 billion U.S. dollars more than for the same period last year. Its foreign exchange reserve surpassed 900 billion U.S. dollars, worsening the imbalance of payments.

    In addition, prices of manufactured goods and raw materials, and between prices of farm produce and products, such as fertiliser, used in agriculture made it very difficult for manufacturers and farmers to increase their income.

    Despite these issues, the country's revenue increased by 500 billion yuan (about 61.65 billion U.S. dollars) in the first five months of the year, an annual rise of 22.8 percent. The income of urban residents also increased by more than 10 percent.

    The profits of industrial enterprises increased by 25 percent nationwide in the first five months of the year, noted Qiu, who added 80 percent of the profits were concentrated in five major businesses ranging from petroleum, power, coal to non-ferrous metals, with the remaining 20 percent being shared by enterprises engaged in more than 30 industry sectors.

    The Chinese Economists Society (CES) is a non-profit academic organization founded on May 26, 1985, in New York. CES aims to promote market-based economic reforms and open-door policies in China, to expand academic exchanges between China and the rest of the world and to engage in scholarly studies of the Chinese economy. Enditem