According to the customs statistics, the imports & exports of Jilin Province were RMB￥ 43.52 billion cumulatively from January to April 2017, marking a year-on-year increase of 13.1%, including exports of RMB￥ 9.73 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 14.6%, and imports of RMB￥ 33.8 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 12.7%. In April alone, the imports and exports of Jilin Province were RMB￥ 10.63 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 3.1%, including exports of RMB￥ 2.52 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 11.9%, and imports of RMB￥ 8.11 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 0.6%.
In US$, the imports and exports of Jilin Province totaled US$ 6.33 billion from January to April, marking a year-on-year increase of 7%. The exports totaled US$ 1.41 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 8.1%, and the imports totaled US$ 4.92 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 6.7%. In April alone, the imports and exports of Jilin Province were US$ 1.54 billion, marking a year-on-year decrease of 3%, including exports of US$ 360million, marking a year-on-year increase of 5.5%, and imports of US$ 1.18 billion, marking a year-on-year decrease of 5.4%.
According to the customs statistics, from January to April, the imports and exports of China totaled RMB￥ 8.42 trillion, marking a year-on-year increase of 20.3%, including exports of RMB￥ 4.57 trillion, marking a year-on-year increase of 14.7%, and imports of RMB￥ 3.85 trillion, marking a year-on-year increase of 27.8%. The imports and exports of Liaoning Province were RMB￥ 222.58 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 33.4%, including exports of RMB￥ 98.29 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 14.7%, and imports of RMB￥ 124.3 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 53.3%. The imports and exports of Heilongjiang Province were RMB￥ 38.3 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 31%, including exports of RMB￥ 9.68 billion, marking a year-on-year decrease of 1.2%, and imports of RMB￥ 28.62 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 47.3%. Liaoning ranked 9th, Jilin 21st and Heilongjiang 23rd in terms of imports and exports during this period.
I. Main features of imports and exports of Jilin Province from January to April
1. Foreign trade maintained a stabilizing trend of growth but the growth margin was becoming smaller. From January to April 2017, Jilin Province’s imports & exports kept good growth trends which started at the beginning of this year, with year-on-year growth of 13.1% in imports & exports. Since the beginning of this year, the monthly imports & exports have shown a growing trend. However, the gradual increase of the benchmark of imports & exports in the first half of last year caused the cumulative growth of imports & exports of Jilin Province to decline gradually. The growth margin became smaller by 3.6% compared with the 1st quarter, which was lower than the national average by 7.2%.
(The following data are based on US$ as the numeraire.)
2. The growth of imports & exports of the municipalities (prefectures) varied obviously. Five regions witnessed growth of imports & exports, and the growth margin of Jilin City, Liaoyuan, Tonghua and Yanbian Prefecture was higher than the provincial average, while the imports & exports of four regions, i.e. Siping, Baishan, Songyuan and Baicheng, dropped, and the drop was over 20% for all.
3. Good performance on the part of major enterprises in imports & exports. From January to April, FAW Group continued with its good growth trend in imports & exports, witnessing a year-on-year increase of 9.4%, which effectively promoted the foreign trade growth of Jilin Province. Hunchun Zijin Copper, Continental Automotive Electronics, the Cloud Supply Chain Company of the Changchun Comprehensive Bonded Zone, the Chang-Ji-Tu Strategy Logistics, and other main enterprises also realized big growth trends. The total amount of the four enterprises’ imports & exports had a net increase of US$ 290 million year on year. Of the top 100 importing and exporting enterprises, 54 realized increase of imports & exports, which played a positive promotional role to the imports & exports of Jilin Province.
4. The exports of the broad-heading commodities grew well, while the imports of agricultural products dropped by a big margin. Of the eight important broad-heading commodity exports accounting for 94% of the province’s total exports, the exports of six types of commodities, i.e. agricultural products, automobiles and parts, light & textile products, pharmaceutical products, metallurgical and mineral products and woodware and furniture, realized growth from January to April, and four of them marked growth over 10%, while the exports of petrochemical products, and rail cars and parts dropped by 3.7% and 31.3% respectively. Of the five important broad-heading commodity imports accounting for 83% of the province’s total imports, the imports of automobiles and auto parts, metallurgical and mineral products and light and textile products achieved growth, while the imports of agricultural products continued with the huge decline, down by 50.7%, and the imports of petrochemical products were slightly down by 1.6%.
5. The imports from and exports to our major trade partners revealed a good trend. From January to April, among the top 10 trade markets of our province, Jilin Province realized rather good growth in imports from and exports to all the markets except those of Germany, Slovakia and America. The growth in the six markets of Japan, the ROK, Hungary, Czech, Russia and Thailand was over 20%. Regarding to exports, the ROK, Japan and the U.S.A. are the top three large markets to our province, and in terms of imports, Germany, Japan and Slovakia are the top three import source countries.
6. The imports & exports of general trade grew while those of the state-owned enterprises went down slightly. January-April, the imports & exports of general trade of our province were US$ 5.29 billion, up by 5.9% year on year, accounting for 84% of the total imports & exports of our province; the imports & exports of processing trade were US$ 500 million, down by 3.2% year on year; there were large increases of imports & exports of the bonded warehouses, the transit goods of the storages of the bonded zone and the small-amount trade imports & exports along the frontier. The imports and exports of foreign-funded enterprises and private enterprises achieved growth by 13.5% and 0.2% respectively, while the imports and exports of state-owned enterprises fell by 1%
II. Several concerns about our province’s foreign trade
1. Exports in the foreign trade are expected to maintain its good growth trend. According to the statistics of the General Administration of Customs, in April, the leader of foreign trade exports was 40.7, up by 0.5 over the previous month. The network questionnaire data showed that, in the current month, our country’s export manager index rose by 1 to 44.8; the incremental export order index and the corporate composite cost index rose by 1.8 and 1.2 to 48.2 and 23.2 respectively, which showed that that the recovery and good trend of our country’s foreign trade was further consolidated.
2. The imports & exports of foreign trade were slowing down. January-April, the growth of imports was lower than that of exports, which was the first after April last year. Over the recent years, as a main backup of foreign trade of Jilin Province, the imports have been basically better than the exports. However, under the current circumstances where the imports of China are growing at a tremendous speed, and surplus of foreign trade has continuously become smaller, our province’s imports are showing a slowing-down trend, which has brought a challenge to steady growth of foreign trade of Jilin Province.
