According to the customs statistics, the foreign trade of Jilin Province continued with its stabilizing and progressing trend in the 1st quarter of 2017, with imports & exports accumulatively totaling RMB￥ 32.88 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 16.7%, including exports of RMB￥ 7.21 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 15.6%, and imports of RMB￥ 25.67 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 17.1%. In the 1st quarter, Jilin Province ranked 21st in imports & exports in China, with exports ranking 25th and imports 17th. In March alone, the imports and exports of Jilin Province were RMB￥ 11.7 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 12.1%, including exports of RMB￥ 2.67 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 12.3%, and imports of RMB￥ 9.03 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 12.1%.
In US$, the imports and exports of Jilin Province totaled US$ 4.78 billion in the 1st quarter, marking a year-on-year increase of 10.7%. The exports totaled US$ 1.05 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 9.1%, and the imports totaled US$ 3.74 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 11.1%. In March alone, the imports and exports of Jilin Province were US$ 1.71 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 7.4%, including exports of US$ 390 million, marking a year-on-year increase of 7%, and imports of US$ 1.32 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 7.5%.
According to the customs statistics, in the 1st quarter, the imports and exports of China totaled RMB￥ 6198.58 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 21.8%, including exports of RMB￥ 3326.76 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 14.8%, and imports of RMB￥ 2871.82 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 31.1%. The imports and exports of Liaoning Province were RMB￥ 167.41 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 39.2%, including exports of RMB￥ 74.99 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 18.7%, and imports of RMB￥ 92.43 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 61.9%. The imports and exports of Heilongjiang Province were RMB￥ 28.62 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 34%, including exports of RMB￥ 7.02 billion, marking a year-on-year decrease of 5.4%, and imports of RMB￥ 21.6 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 55%. Liaoning ranked 9th, Jilin 21st and Heilongjiang 22nd in terms of imports and exports during this period.
I. Main features of imports and exports of Jilin Province in the 1st quarter
1. Foreign trade maintained a stabilizing trend of growth but the growth margin was becoming smaller. In the 1st quarter, Jilin Province’s imports & exports kept good growth trends, with year-on-year growth of 16.7%, but the growth margin became smaller by 2.8% compared with the previous two months, which was lower than the national average by 5.1%.
(The following data are based on US$ as the numeraire.)
2. The foreign trade growth of Changchun and Yanbian drove the provincial situation into stabilization. In the 1st quarter, Changchun achieved US$ 3.7 billion of imports & exports, marking a year-on-year growth of 12%, and Yanbian Prefecture, US$ 530 million, marking a year-on-year growth of 20.8%. The growth of the two regions was higher than the provincial average, accounting for 88.4% of the total imports & exports of Jilin Province, which effectively promoted good growth of imports & exports of Jilin Province. The imports & exports of Siping grew by 35%, while those of the other six regions 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. In the 1st quarter, FAW Group continued with its good growth trend in imports & exports, witnessing a year-on-year increase of 16.2%, 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$ 230 million year on year. Of the top 100 importing and exporting enterprises, 57 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 91% of the province’s total exports, the exports of agricultural products, automobiles and parts, light & textile products, pharmaceutical products and metallurgical and mineral products maintained growth, while petrochemical products, woodware and furniture, rail cars and parts dropped to the varied extent. 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 petrochemical products achieved growth, while the imports of agricultural products continued with the huge decline, down by 61.2%, and the imports of light and textile products were slightly down by 0.2%.
5. The imports from and exports to our major trade partners revealed a good trend. In the 1st quarter, 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 Slovakia and America. The growth in such markets as Japan, the ROK, Russia, Belgium, Thailand, etc. was over 20%. Regarding to exports, the ROK, the U.S.A. and Japan are the three large markets to our province. The exports of Jilin Province to Russia demonstrated a good growing trend. 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 private enterprises went down slightly. In the 1st quarter, the imports & exports of general trade of our province were US$ 4.01 billion, up by 9.9% year on year; the imports & exports of processing trade were US$ 370 million, down by 4.6% 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 state-owned enterprises and foreign-funded enterprises achieved growth by 6.7% and 16.4% respectively, while the imports and exports of private enterprises fell by 1.3%
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 March, the leader of the Chinese foreign trade exports was 40.2, the same as the previous month, ending the month-on-month rise of the previous four months. The network questionnaire data showed that, in the current month, our country’s export composite PMI rose by 2.2 to 43.8; the incremental export order index, the manager confidence index and the corporate composite cost index rose by 2.2, 3 and 0.4 to 46.4, 50.9 and 22 respectively.
2. The prices of iron sand, coal, copper sand and other international bulk commodities recovered and rose. In March 2017, Jilin Province’s imported iron sand dropped by 24.5% in quantity but its import amount rose by 14.1% in monetary terms; its imported copper sand increased by 5.3% in quantity and its import amount rose by 42.5% in monetary terms; its imported coal dropped by 23.5% in quantity but its import amount grew by 4.1% in monetary terms. The price hikes of these international bulk commodities in international markets played an active promotional role in our province’s effort to step up the scales of imports.
