By staff reporter Liu Zhijie

(Caijing.com.cn) Chinese economists' confidence in the economy rose in the first quarter due to the impact of the government's stimulus package, according to a survey conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics.

The survey, covering 100 Chinese economists specializing in macroeconomics, was completed at the end of March. The survey's confidence index came in at 3.97 points, still on the low end of the 9-point scale but higher than the 2.43 recorded in the fourth quarter.

The index was at 5.08, 4.55 and 3.81 points in the first three quarters of 2008.

Most economists said China's economy will bottom out in 2009, although it may need more time for the recovery to be apparent.

They expect property prices to drop further as demand shrivels in the cooling economy.

Government statistics show that among the country's largest 70 cities, property prices fell 1.3 percent over the first three months of the year.

Economists are also confident that China can achieve an 8 percent gross domestic product growth in 2009, the survey showed. Eight percent is China's official GDP growth target for the year.

China's economy grew 6.1 percent year-on-year in the first quarter to 6.57 trillion yuan - the weakest rise since 1992 when current record-keeping methods.

State media earlier reported that the central government plans to release the third tranche of its 4 trillion yuan economic stimulus package in the current quarter.

Beijing announced 4 trillion yuan in stimulus spending in late 2008, allocating 100 billion yuan of that total from the central government as the first tranche in the fourth quarter. In February, the central government released 130 billion yuan as the second tranche of the stimulus package.