China's January trade data not inflated: Ministry

China's Commerce Ministry spokesman Shen Danyang told reporters on Tuesday that the better-than-expected trade in January was not inflated by an inflow of speculative funds disguised as trade payments and that such suspicions are groundless.

The structure of China's exports, export markets and exporters were all reasonable and logical in January, although he was not ruling out sporadic cases of interest arbitrage with fake trade activities, Shen said.

China's exports surged 10.6 percent year-on-year in January, much faster than the 4.3 percent growth in December.

Shen added that the trade growth pace in January was within expectations because of economic recovery in developed economies and trade facilitation measures by the Chinese government. January's figures were also subject to distortion by the weeklong Spring Festival which drove exporter front-loaded shipments beforehand.

Shen expected China's trade growth this year would be about the same as last year, at 7.6 percent.