BHP Billiton, the world’s biggest resources company by market value, has promised more cost-cutting as it forecast a slowing in China’s annual economic growth rate. “China will aim for more moderated growth. And I think more moderated growth is around the 7 to 8 per cent mark over the next couple of years, trending down to 6 per cent,” Graham Kerr, BHP’s chief financial officer, told the Bloomberg Economic Australian Economic Summit in Sydney yesterday.

The world’s largest mining companies have slowed expansion plans and delayed projects in the past year, partly in response to weaker growth in China, amid pressure from shareholders to curtail spending and cut costs.

China is the world’s biggest buyer of commodities and BHP’s most important customer, accounting for almost a third of the company’s annual sales. But the country’s gross domestic product expanded 7.8 per cent in 2012 – its slowest pace in 13 years.