(Bloomberg) -- Six prominent Chinese economists including former central bank adviser Huang Yiping and fellow Peking University professor Yao Yang called for a relaxing of the country’s Covid rules to boost economic growth. 

The resumption of economic activities should be the country’s top priority in the near term, the group said in an report published on the WeChat account of signatory Ren Zeping, former chief economist at Soochow Securities, on Saturday. Activities at public venues should resume because economic growth is fundamental to solving the nation’s problems, including to able to withstand external pressures from country’s such as the US and to help with domestic economic restructuring, according to the report. 

The signatories to the report joined a chorus of government-linked economists who have recently called for more efforts to boost the world’s second-largest economy, which has been battered by the Covid restrictions.

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The economists also called for the growth target for 2023 to be set at higher than 5% to send a strong signal that boosting economy is a priority for the government. They suggested increasing the budget deficit for next year to raise spending on infrastructure to drive demand.

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