The central government might loosen its macroeconomic measures, regretting having tightened too much last year.

"Some of us are now worrying about a monetary over-reaction," Reuters quoted an unnamed PBOC official as saying.

"The snowstorm will dampen economic growth, especially for the first quarter," said Erwin Sanft, head of China research at BNP Paribas. "The earlier than scheduled shutdowns in certain industries will make the already disappointing first quarter corporate results more disappointing."

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As of Monday, about 140 million yuan (HK$152 million) had been claimed as insured losses, and economic losses of up to22.09 billion yuan had accumulated since January 10, the Shanghai Securities News reported.

Earnings of PICC Property and Casualty (2328), Ping An Insurance (2318) and China Pacific Insurance - the upcoming initial public offering candidate - will be affected the most as they are the top three players in the non-life insurance sector, analysts said.

"We are looking into the matters and evaluating the situation," Liu Zhenghuan, executive director at PICC, told The Standard. Sally Yim at rating agency Moody's said under- insurance could buffer the losses and claims would not be as large as expected.

Analysts yesterday said they will not revise their forecasts for GDP growth until material impact has been reported. Standard and Poor's said it maintained the mainland's economic growth forecast at 9.3 percent in 2008.

But power shortages, crop losses and food transportation interruption could help push inflation to a record 7 percent in January, economists said.

The combination of snowstorms and economic downturns has sown doubts in Beijing about whether to sustain the monetary tightening campaign while keeping the economy on track.

"It's a higher risk for the central government to overvalue its tightening measures in such a situation," said Tan Kim Eng, associate director of sovereign and international public finance ratings at Standard & Poor's.