BEIJING — China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, opened the annual meeting of the country’s handpicked legislature on Monday with a markedly upbeat assessment of the state of the nation, stating that threats posed by bad local government debt and soaring real estate prices were under control, that the economy was robust and that “the people’s well-being is improving.”

While he predicted a steep slowdown in growth in 2012, to a 7.5 percent annual increase in gross domestic product in 2012 from last year’s 9.2 percent, Mr. Wen said the economy was on a controlled glide to meet the target set last year in the leadership’s five-year plan to achieve average growth of 7 percent through 2015.

The government will focus in its final year on raising incomes and rebalancing the national economy to be driven less by investment and exports, and more by consumer demand, Mr. Wen indicated, with the annual growth in imports and exports dropping to 10 percent, compared with more than 24 percent last year.

Mr. Wen’s so-called work report is the predictable highlight of every opening session of the National People’s Congress, as the legislature is called. This year, however, the focus of both outside observers and the nearly 3,000 delegates is likely to turn elsewhere: to the leadership change taking place late this year at the top of the Communist Party and the government.