Top Biz News

Nation posts record US$13b trade surplus

By Jiang Wei (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-06-13 08:49

"The trade imbalance has become a major problem of the country's foreign trade. It is difficult to address it in a short period, " Li said.

But he predicted that the country was likely to limit the trade surplus to within US$50 billion this year on the back of changes in export policy and rising domestic investment.

Meanwhile, US officials said Washington would revise laws to facilitate exports of some sensitive high-technology equipment to China, a move that is expected to help increase US exports to China.

But these high-tech products are restricted to civilian use and importers will have to apply for licences from the US government.

As the liberalized items only account for a tiny part of over 2,000 categories that are restricted by US export control policy, the measure is not expected to resolve the trade imbalance between the two countries.

The country's foreign trade amounted to US$647.9 billion in the first five months of the year, up 23.9 per cent over the same period last year, according to the customs statistics.

Imports rose 22 per cent year-on-year in the first five months to US$300.5 billion, while exports increased by 25.7 per cent year-on-year to US$347.3 billion.

Customs said both general and processing trade kept the pace of growth fast over the past five months. General trade amounted to US$276.6 billion in this period, up 22.7 per cent year-on-year, while processing trade stood at US$307.4 billion, up 23.9 per cent year-on-year.

The European Union (EU) remained China's largest trade partner with a bilateral trade volume of US$98.3 billion in the first five months this year, the customs data showed.

The EU was followed by the United States, Japan and the Association of South-East Asian Nations.