HONG KONG: Asian markets were mostly lower on Monday, after China released data showing the economy in 2013 maintained its slowest growth rate for more than a decade.

The losses came after a broadly negative lead from Wall Street, while Japanese gaming giant Nintendo lost almost a fifth of its value following a forecast last week that it would see a net loss in this fiscal year.

Tokyo fell 0.55 percent, Hong Kong slipped 0.51 percent and Sydney gave up 0.23 percent while Shanghai was 0.42 percent lower but Seoul climbed 0.24 percent.

China said in the morning that its economy grew 7.7 percent last year, the same as 2012, which was the slowest since 1999. Gross domestic product (GDP) expansion for the October-December quarter also came in at 7.7 percent, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said, from 7.8 percent in the previous three months.

But while the NBS said the Chinese "economy showed good momentum of stable and moderate growth" it warned of "deep-rooted problems" including a mountain of local authority debt.

SOURCE: AFP