Trade volume in Jan.-Sept.nears 2003's total (Xinhua) Updated: 2004-10-15 12:16
China's trade volume in the January-September period reached US$828.55
billion, up 36.7 percent year-on-year and approaching the previous year's total
of US$851.21 billion.
Figures released Thursday by the General Administration of Customs (GAS)
showed that China enjoyed its fifth consecutive month of trade surplus in
September, turning the total trade volume to a surplus of US$3.93 billion in the
first three quarters.
The nation saw continuous trade deficit from January to April and accumulated
an unusual high trade deficit of US$10.76 billion. The situation began to turn
around in May as the macro- control measures took effect and growth of primary
products import slowed.
In the fist nine months, export of machinery and electronic products grew 44
percent year-on-year to US$225.01 billion, accounting for 54.1 percent of the
total export volume. Export of hi-tech products reached US$112.95 billion, up
54.3 percent year to year, or 19 percentage points higher than the average
export growth rate.
According to GAS statistics, China's import of primary products saw slight
decline while import of industrial products soared 33.5 percent year on year in
the first three quarters. Among which, auto import increased 4.4 percent to
136,000 and steel import dropped 15.2 percent to 23.93 million tons.
Since the growth of Sino-EU, Sino-US bilateral trade both exceeded 30 percent
in the first nine months, Japan, China's largest trade partner for many years,
had receded to third place following the European Union and the United States by
the end of September.
China enjoyed prosperous bilateral trade with all its first ten partners in
the first three quarters, and its trade volume with Canada, Australia and the
Republic of Korea grew 56.2 percent, 50.3 percent and 46.7 percent respectively
over the same period of last year.
