China Cuts 2014 GDP Growth Figure To 7.3%, Say Further Revisions Likely

China on Monday revised its 2014 GDP growth figure to 7.3 percent from a previously reported 7.4 percent. The revision comes just a day after China’s Finance Minister Lou Jiwei said that the country’s overall GDP growth would remain at approximately 7 percent.

According to the state-run Xinhua news agency, which cited China’s National Bureau of Statistics, the country’s revised GDP for 2014 stood at 63.6 trillion yuan ($10 trillion), down by 32.4 billion yuan from the initial estimate. The figure is subject to further revision, the report added.

After the revision, China’s services sector accounted for 48.1 percent of GDP in 2014, down from the previously announced 48.2 percent, while the manufacturing and construction sector accounted for 42.7 percent of GDP, Xinhua reported. The primary sector -- agriculture -- grew 4.1 percent.

“China revises growth data every year, but it's usually upwards. In that regard, it is unusual that the revision was downwards,” Dariusz Kowalczyk, senior economist and strategist at Credit Agricole, told CNBC. “Rationally speaking, a 0.1 percent revision isn’t a big deal -- and it doesn't tell us much about the Chinese economy, but when it comes to sentiment, this is a negative development.”

In 2015, China is headed for its slowest economic growth in over two decades, even as the government attempts to revive the economy through a raft of measures, including cutting benchmark interest rates, lowering the amount of deposits banks must hold in reserves and devaluing the yuan -- a move that triggered a rout in the country’s stock markets.

However, the announcement did not seem to have affected Chinese stocks. The Shanghai Composite Index was trading up 0.88 percent while Hong Kong's Hang Seng index was up 0.22 percent.