According to the statistics of the General Administration of Customs, the total import and export value reached US$1.22254 trillion, with a decrease of 7.6% year on year, among which the export totaled US$690.16 billion, up 1.6% and the import was US$532.35 billion, down 17.3% in January-April 2015. The MOFCOM Spokesman Sun Jiwen said that the foreign trade situation in China is more complex and severe with big downward pressure since this year. Under the background of the global trade decreasing and the export of the main economies and the new emerging market countries presenting the negative growth, the export of China still maintains an increasing momentum, the decreasing amplitude of import is gradually narrowing and the quality and efficiency of the foreign trade development is further improved. It is expected that the situation in the second half of the year is better than the first half of the year and the foreign trade in the whole year is lower at first and higher in the end.
Sun pointed out that in order to accurately study and judge the foreign trade situation, the MOFCOM has respectively organized the investigating group to go to 15 provinces (regions and cities) to carry out the investigations on the foreign trade situation, to conduct the questionnaire survey on almost 6,000 foreign trade enterprises, to hold the in-depth interviews with 80 exhibitors of the Canton Fair and to carefully analyze 66 key industries and the previous 30 large export markets recently. On the whole, many enterprises think the major difficulties faced by them at present are that the demand of the international market is low, some regions are in turmoil, RMB appreciates obviously against the main currency except for the U.S. dollar, the level of trade facilitation needs to be improved, financing is difficult and expensive and the labor cost continues to rise.
Sun emphasized that although the pressure of stabilizing growth is increasing, the adjustment trend of the export structure in China is sound. In the previous four months, the general trade export totaled US$ 372.03 billion, with an increase of 7.3%, contributing to 241% of the total foreign trade export increment, accounting for 53.9% of the total export value. The export to the new emerging market increased 5.7%, contributing to 169.7% of the total export increment. The export to the United States and the ASEAN increased 9% and 12.9% respectively. The export of private enterprises went up 6.5%, contributing to 175.6% of the total export increment, accounting for 43.1% and becoming the major driving force to pull the export growth. The export of mechanical and electronical products increased 3.6%, accounting for 57.9%. The export of large-sized compete sets of equipments such as rolling stock increased more than 10%. The growth in the central and western regions was faster than eastern regions and a large batch of enterprises expanded the export by increasing the cultivation of self-owned brands, strengthening research and development innovation, establishing the international marketing network and exploring the cross-border e-commerce mode, becoming the highlight of growth.
Sun pointed out that in the previous four months, the decreasing amplitude of import was relatively big mainly because of the price declining of the bulk commodity. In January-April, the import quantity of such eight bulk commodities as crude oil, iron ore, plastic, natural gas, paper pulp, grain, chemical fertilizer and copper concentrate increased while the prices decreased, pulling down 9.8 percentage points of the import growth. The point was that the import quantity of bulk commodity does not decrease. Based on the spirit of “doing more with less money”, the above eight kinds of commodities saved about US$63.4 billion import payment, which was conducive to reducing the costs of enterprises and improving the international competitiveness and the management efficiency.
Sun said that the steady growth of foreign trade concerns the industrial development, stabilizing the employment, improving the livelihood and the whole situation of the economic society development of China. Faced with the new trend, new situation and new challenge, efforts should be made to actively adapt to the new normal, stabilize the growth by all manner of means and unswervingly adjust the structure according to the decisions and deployments of the Central Party Committee and the State Council. Stabilizing the growth and guaranteeing the shares should be placed in a more important position, efforts should be made to continue to vigorously implement policies, to stick to the direction of issues, to introduce the more targeted measures, to clear up and standardize the unreasonable charge in the import and export process, to practically ease the difficulties of financing, to further improve the level of trade facilitation and to improve the business environment. At the same time, efforts should also be made to accelerate cultivating the new advantages of foreign trade competition, to implement the innovation drive, to increase the internal impetus and aftereffect of the foreign trade development, to strive to maintain the steady growth of the foreign trade and to make more contributions to the development of national economy and the society when the traditional advantages are maintained.
