According to the customs statistics, the imports & exports of Jilin Province were RMB￥ 53.51 billion cumulatively from January to May 2017, marking a year-on-year increase of 7.2%, including exports of RMB￥ 12.1 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 10.9%, and imports of RMB￥ 41.41 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 6.1%. In May alone, the imports and exports of Jilin Province were RMB￥ 10.24 billion, marking a year-on-year decrease of 10.6%, including exports of RMB￥ 2.48 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 2.2%, and imports of RMB￥ 7.76 billion, marking a year-on-year decrease of 14%.

　　In US$, the imports and exports of Jilin Province totaled US$ 7.79 billion from January to May, marking a year-on-year increase of 1.3%. The exports totaled US$ 1.76 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 4.6%, and the imports totaled US$ 6.03 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 0.4%. In May alone, the imports and exports of Jilin Province were US$ 1.49 billion, marking a year-on-year decrease of 15.9%, including exports of US$ 360 million, marking a year-on-year decrease of 3.8%, and imports of US$ 1.13 billion, marking a year-on-year decrease of 19.1%.

　　According to the customs statistics, from January to May, the imports and exports of China totaled RMB￥ 10.76 trillion, marking a year-on-year increase of 19.8%, including exports of RMB￥ 5.88 trillion, marking a year-on-year increase of 14.8%, and imports of RMB￥ 4.88 trillion, marking a year-on-year increase of 26.5%. The imports and exports of Liaoning Province were RMB￥ 277.34 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 29.5%, including exports of RMB￥ 122.33 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 13.5%, and imports of RMB￥ 155.01 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 45.7%. The imports and exports of Heilongjiang Province were RMB￥ 48.98 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 32.9%, including exports of RMB￥ 13.14 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 6.7%, and imports of RMB￥ 35.84 billion, marking a year-on-year increase of 46.1%. Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang ranked 9th, 21st and 23rd respectively in terms of imports and exports during this period.

　　I. Main features of imports and exports of Jilin Province from January to May

　　1. Foreign trade showed a downturn trend. May witnessed a year-on-year decrease of 10.6% in imports & exports of Jilin Province, which was the first downward situation this year. Exports grew by 2.2% year-on-year, while imports fell by 14% year-on-year. On one hand, it was caused by continued depression of imports, and, on the other, the year-on-year imports & exports were at the peak of the year, and the higher benchmark led to the rather big decline this May. Although the cumulative imports & exports of Jilin Province maintained growth in the first five months of the year, the growth margin in May became smaller by 6.1% than that of the previous four months.

　　(The following data are based on US$ as the numeraire.)

　　2. The growth of imports & exports of the municipalities (prefectures) varied. From January to May, the imports & exports of the three regions of Changchun, Jilin City and Yanbian accounted for as much as 92.4% of the total imports & exports of the province, where the growth of Jilin City and Yanbian was by far higher than the provincial average, which drove the robust and stable growth of imports & exports of the province. The four regions of Siping, Baishan, Songyuan and Baicheng saw their imports & exports going down, and the decreasing range was over 20% for each of them.

　　3. Large differences among major enterprises in imports & exports. From January to May, FAW Group continued with its good growth trend in imports & exports, but its growth rate fell slightly below the provincial average, witnessing a year-on-year increase of 1.1%. From January to May, the net increase of the top 10 enterprises with growing imports & exports was US$ 496 million, and the net decrease top 10 enterprises with declining imports & exports was US$ 460 million. Of the top 100 importing and exporting enterprises, 58 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. agro-products, automobiles and parts, light & textile products, woodware and furniture, pharmaceutical products, and metallurgical and mineral products realized growth from January to May, while the exports of petrochemical products and rail cars and parts dropped by 3.4% and 35.1% 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, agro-products and petrochemical products dropped, where the drop of imports of agro-products was as much as 51.8%. The exports and imports of Jilin Province’s mechanical and electrical products were both declining, while the exports and imports of hi-tech products marked rather encouraging growth.

　　5. The imports from and exports to our major trade partners revealed a good trend. From January to May, 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, America and Belgium, and the growth was all over 15%. Regarding to exports, the ROK, Japan and the U.S.A. are the top three large markets to our province, and Germany, Japan and Slovakia are the top three import source countries in terms of imports.

　　6. The imports & exports of general trade fell while those of the foreign-funded enterprises realized growth. From January to May, the imports & exports of general trade of our province were US$ 6.52 billion, down by 0.1% year on year, accounting for 84% of the total imports & exports of our province; the imports & exports of processing trade were US$ 620 million, down by 4.3% year on year; there were large increases of imports & exports of the goods in 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 achieved growth by 4.8%, while the imports and exports of state-owned enterprises and private enterprises fell by 2.4% and 6.8% respectively.

　　II. Several concerns about our province’s foreign trade

　　1. Exports in the foreign trade are expected to maintain a good growth trend. According to the statistics of the General Administration of Customs, in May, the leader of foreign trade exports was 41.1, up by 0.4 over the previous month. The network questionnaire data showed that, in the current month, our country’s export manager index was 45.2, rising by 0.4 over the previous month; the incremental export order index and the export manager confidence index rose by 0.6 and 0.4 to 48.8 and 50.9 respectively.

　　2. The growth of imports & exports of foreign trade was slowing down. The growth of imports of our province was 20.4% lower than that the national average, and 39.6% and 40% lower than that of Liaoning Province and Heilongjiang Province respectively. The growth of imports of our province was by far lower than the average of China as well as Liaoning Province and Heilongjiang Province, which was the direct cause to restrict our province’s foreign trade growth. The rise of both quantity and price of bulk commodity imports boosted our country’s rapid growth of imports. The import price of the 10 categories of bulk commodities, including petroleum, iron ore sand, natural gas, steel, copper ore concentrate, etc. (accounting for 24.3% of the total imports in the corresponding period) rose by 7.7%-90.8%, and the import quantity by 2.4%-29.6%, which prompted import growth by 11.7%. Our province mainly imports automobiles and auto parts, whose imports account for 68%, while the imports of metallurgical and mineral products accounted for merely about 9% of the total imports of our province, so their price hike had limited boosting effect on our province’s imports.