China’s economic growth expanded at the slowest rate in more than six years; at 6.9 percent in the third quarter, the National Bureau of Statistics of China said on Monday.

The Central Government’s official economic growth target for the whole of 2015 is 7 percent. Nonethless the July to September number was slightly better than market forecasts of a 6.8 percent year-on-year rise.

Sheng Laiyun, a spokesman for the statistics bureau, said in a press briefing on Monday the gross domestic product (GDP) of the third quarter could still be considered as being “around 7 percent”.

“Although the economy growth has slowed down a little, the overall trend of a steady [economic] growth has not changed,” he added.

After the announcement of the results, Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua quoted China’s Premier, Li Keqiang, saying the Chinese Government would continue pushing forward mass entrepreneurship and innovation as engines of new growth.

In the first three quarters of this year, China’s GDP grew by an aggregate of 6.9 percent.