According to the customs statistics, the imports and exports of Jilin Province totaled RMB￥ 21.18 billion from January to February 2017, marking a year-on-year increase of 19.5%, including exports of RMB￥ 4.54 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 17.6%, and imports of RMB￥ 16.64 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 20%. Jilin Province ranked with 21st in imports & exports in China, with exports ranking 27th and imports 17th. In February alone, the imports and exports of Jilin Province were RMB￥ 8.64 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 3.8%, including exports of RMB￥ 1.84 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 11.4%, and imports of RMB￥ 6.8 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 1.9%.
In US$, the imports and exports of Jilin Province totaled US$ 3.08 billion from January to February 2017, marking a year-on-year increase of 12.6%. The exports totaled US$ 660 million, marking a year-on-year increase of 10.4%, and the imports totaled US$ 2.42 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 13.2%. In February alone, the imports and exports of Jilin Province were US$ 1.26 billion, marking a year-on-year decrease of 1.1%, including exports of US$ 270 million, marking a year-on-year increase of 5.9%, and imports of US$ 990 million, marking a year-on-year decrease of 2.9%.
According to the customs statistics, from January to February, the imports and exports of China totaled RMB￥ 3890.04 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 20.6%, including exports of RMB￥ 2091.85 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 11%, and imports of RMB￥ 1798.19 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 34.2%. The imports and exports of Liaoning Province were RMB￥ 107.1 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 44%, including exports of RMB￥ 47.93 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 19.2%, and imports of RMB￥ 59.18 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 73.3%. The imports and exports of Heilongjiang Province were RMB￥ 18.79 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 38.3%, including exports of RMB￥ 4.55 billion, marking a year-on-year decrease of 2.3%, and imports of RMB￥ 14.23 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 59.4%. Liaoning ranked 9th, Jilin 21st and Heilongjiang 23th in terms of imports and exports during this period.
I. Main features of imports and exports of Jilin Province from January to February 2017
1. Foreign trade maintained promising trends of growth but the growth margin were becoming smaller. From January to February, Jilin Province’s imports & exports kept good growth trends, but the growth margin became smaller by 13.8%, from the 33.3% in January to 19.5%, which was lower than the national average by 1.1%, mainly due to the drop of imports & exports of major enterprises like FAW Group in February.
(The following data are based on US$ as the numeraire.)
2. The growth of imports & exports of main regions boosted stabilization of the provincial situation. In the first two months of the year, Changchun achieved US$ 2.37 billion, Yanbian Prefecture, US$ 350 million and Jilin City US$ 130 million in imports & exports. In addition, the growth of the three regions was higher than the provincial average, accounting for 92.5% of the total imports & exports of Jilin Province, which effectively promoted good growth of imports & exports of Jilin Province. The imports & exports of Siping and Tonghua grew by 32.8% and 5.0% respectively, while Liaoyuan, Baishan, Songyuan, Baicheng, etc. went down to a varied extent. The imports & exports of the pilot empowered counties demonstrated a fairly strong growth momentum.
3. Good performance on the part of major enterprises in imports & exports. Although FAW Group saw a 4.3% year-on-year fall in its imports & exports in February, accumulatively, its imports & exports of the first two months of the year still marked growth by 20.3%, which effectively promoted good growth of foreign trade across Jilin Province. Hunchun Zijin Copper, Continental Automotive Electronics, Tonggang Group, Chang-Ji-Tu Strategy Logistics, the Cloud Supply Chain Company of the Changchun Comprehensive Bonded Zone, and other main enterprises also realized big growth trends, and the total amount of their imports & exports had a net increase of US$ 170 million year on year, which played a positive promotional role to the imports & exports of Jilin Province.
4. The exports of the broad-heading commodities showed a good pickup trend, while the imports of agricultural products dropped by a big margin. Of the eight important broad-heading commodity exports accounting for 97% of the province’s total exports, seven showed good growth trends with only the category of woodware and furniture going down. The growth of exports of automobiles and auto parts, light & textile products, pharmaceutical products and rail cars and parts stayed above the provincial average. Of the five important broad-heading commodity imports accounting for 85% of the province’s total imports, the imports of automobiles and auto parts, metallurgical and mineral products and petrochemical products were all above the provincial average, while the imports of agricultural products continued with the declining trend, down by 69.4%.
5. The imports from and exports to our major trade partners revealed a good trend. From January to February, among the top 10 trade markets of the province, Jilin Province realized rather good growth in imports from and exports to all the markets except those of Slovakia, America and Hungary. The growth in such traditional markets as Japan, the ROK, Russia, etc. was over 40%. Regarding to exports, the ROK, the U.S.A. and Japan are the three large markets to the province. The exports of Jilin Province to Russia demonstrated a good growing trend.
6. The processing trade realized a growth momentum, and foreign-funded enterprises enlarged their imports and exports proportions. From January to February, the imports & exports of general trade were US$ 2.58 billion, up by 12.5% year on year; the imports & exports of processing trade were US$ 240 million, down by 4.7% year on year; there were large increases of imports & exports of the bonded warehouses and the small-amount trade imports & exports along the frontier. The imports and exports of state-owned enterprises and foreign-funded enterprises achieved growth by 14.9% and 18.1% respectively, while the imports and exports of private enterprises fell by 6.7%
II. Several concerns about our province’s foreign trade
1. The leader of foreign trade exports continued to rise. According to the statistics of the General Administration of Customs, in February, the leader of the Chinese foreign trade exports was 40.2, up by 1.2 over the previous month. The network questionnaire data showed that, in the current month, our country’s export composite PMI rose by 0.1 to 41.6; the incremental export order index and the manager confidence index rose by 0.2 and 0.6 to 44.1 and 47.8 respectively; the corporate composite cost index dropped by 1.2 to 21.6.
2. The prices of iron sand, coal, copper sand and other international bulk commodities recovered and rose. In February 2017, Jilin Province’s imported iron sand dropped by 20.7% in quantity but its import amount rose by 26.1% in monetary terms; its imported copper sand increased by 416.1% in quantity and its import amount rose by 687.3% in monetary terms; its imported coal dropped by 31.2% in quantity but its import amount dropped merely by 2.6% in monetary terms. The price hikes of these international bulk commodities in international markets have played an active promotional role in our province’s effort to step up the scales of imports.
