China's General Administration of Customs Released Half-Year Data on July 10

China's General Administration of Customs released half-year data on July 10, noting a trend of labor-intensive, manufactured products taking a smaller share of the nation's total exports. However, specific stats on plastics exports illustrate decent volume growth and rapid value growth. The seven categories of labor-intensive products - including textiles, apparel, luggage, footwear, toys, furniture and plastic products - grew 7.7 percent altogether during the first six months. But their share in total export fell slightly compared to the same period last year, by 0.3 percentage points to 19.5 percent, the Customs department said in a news release. The release didn't go into details about each category. But a search in the Customs' database finds that China exported 4,067,467 metric tons or $13,737,343,000 of processed plastic products in the first half of 2012. The year-on-year growth reached 8.5 percent for volume (weight) and 34.1 percent for value ($). The reason that the value growth outpaced volume growth is probably two-folded - price increases for the same or similar products as well as structural upgrades that bring more value-added, higher-end products. Source:plasticsnews