The growth rate of foreign trade rebounded in May, reflecting the warmth of the economy and stabilizing foreign trade.
Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, June 9 th, news analysis: The growth rate of foreign trade rebounded in May, reflecting the warmth of the economy and the need to strengthen foreign trade.
Xinhua News Agency reporter Zou Duowei and Xie Xiyao
According to the data released by the General Administration of Customs on June 9, in the first five months of 2022, the total import and export value of China’s goods trade was 16.04 trillion yuan, an increase of 8.3% over the same period last year. Among them, the import and export in May increased by 9.6% year-on-year and 9.2% month-on-month, respectively, and the cumulative growth rate and monthly growth rate rebounded from last month.
Analysts believe that compared with April, the signs of recovery in foreign trade import and export in May sent a positive signal of economic recovery.
According to Li Kuiwen, director of the Statistics and Analysis Department of the General Administration of Customs, the import and export of foreign trade achieved steady growth in the first five months, especially in May, the import and export of goods in the Yangtze River Delta region increased by nearly 20% month-on-month, and the import and export recovered significantly.
On June 9, 2022, a cargo ship was loading foreign trade containers at the fully automated terminal of Qingdao Port, Shandong Port. Xinhua News Agency (photo by Yu Fangping)
Since March this year, foreign trade has been under pressure to slow down due to the epidemic situation in the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and other "foreign trade towns" to varying degrees, coupled with the high base in the same period last year, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the surge in commodity prices.
In order to help foreign trade enterprises to guarantee orders, markets and confidence, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council have recently deployed a series of measures to stabilize foreign trade intensively, and implemented policies to help enterprises out of difficulties in terms of ensuring smooth logistics, increasing fiscal and taxation support, and speeding up export tax rebates and customs clearance efficiency, which effectively helped stabilize the basic market of foreign trade.
From the data of foreign trade in the first five months, China’s foreign trade situation has improved, and both imports and exports with major trading partners have increased.
In the first five months, ASEAN continued to be China’s largest trading partner, accounting for 14.8% of China’s total foreign trade value; In the same period, China’s economic and trade exchanges with countries along the "Belt and Road" were also closer, with imports and exports increasing by 16.8% year-on-year, accounting for 31.9% of China’s total foreign trade value, effectively promoting the complementary advantages of the industrial chain and supply chain.
A series of assistance policies constantly stimulate the vitality of foreign trade market players. The data shows that in the first five months, the number of foreign trade enterprises with import and export performance in China increased by 5% year-on-year, providing solid support for stabilizing foreign trade. Among them, the import and export of private enterprises, the main force of foreign trade, increased by 11.8%, accounting for 49% of China’s total foreign trade value, up by 1.5 percentage points year-on-year.
In addition, the export of some high-tech and high value-added products has maintained rapid growth, demonstrating the continuous improvement of the competitiveness of foreign trade export products. In the first five months, China exported 5.11 trillion yuan of mechanical and electrical products, an increase of 7%, accounting for 57.2% of the total export value. Among them, the automobile was 119.05 billion yuan, an increase of 57.6%.
On May 26, 2022, in Taihe County, Fuyang City, Anhui Province, workers of a garment enterprise produced garments exported overseas. Xinhua News Agency (photo by Liang Xiaopeng)
Regarding the reasons for the rebound in foreign trade growth, Zhang Yu, deputy director of the International Economic and Trade Research Office of the Institute of Finance and Economics of China Academy of Social Sciences, believes that on the one hand, with the improvement of the epidemic prevention and control situation, all localities have gradually resumed work and production, and logistics, transportation, production and operation have improved; On the other hand, a series of measures from the central government to the local government have been accelerated to take effect, which has played a promoting role in stabilizing the basic development of foreign trade.
Although the development of foreign trade showed a recovery growth trend, experts said that they should remain awake and should not be blindly optimistic because the data improved.
Zhang Yu believes that the current economic situation at home and abroad is still complicated and severe. China’s foreign trade development still faces many uncertain factors such as epidemic situation, Fed’s interest rate hike, geopolitics, exchange rate fluctuations, etc. It is still necessary to further resolve the pressure and stabilize expectations to maintain stability and improve the quality of foreign trade.
The the State Council executive meeting held on June 8th emphasized that stabilizing foreign trade and foreign investment is related to the overall economic situation and the overall employment situation. While implementing the policy of stabilizing foreign trade and foreign investment, we will further increase support. The meeting made further arrangements from the aspects of expanding the import of high-quality products, maintaining the stability of the international industrial chain supply chain, and studying the phased reduction and exemption of port-related charges.
"The superposition of these policies will definitely promote the growth of foreign trade." Wang Shouwen, vice minister of the Ministry of Commerce and deputy representative of international trade negotiations, said that while closely monitoring the operation of foreign trade, all localities and relevant departments should also introduce some local support measures in light of the actual situation, so as to improve the efficiency of policy implementation and enable foreign trade enterprises to achieve stable growth and improve quality by enjoying policy dividends under a series of uncertainties.
For the future trend of foreign trade, experts said that with the effective implementation of a package of policies and measures to stabilize growth, foreign trade logistics will be further unblocked, and enterprises will resume work to reach production and speed up further, and China’s foreign trade is expected to continue to maintain a warming momentum.