Trade volume in Jan.-Sept.nears 2003's total
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2004-10-15 12:16

China's trade volume in the January-September period reached US$828.55 billion, up 36.7 percent year-on-year and approaching the previous year's total of US$851.21 billion.

Figures released Thursday by the General Administration of Customs (GAS) showed that China enjoyed its fifth consecutive month of trade surplus in September, turning the total trade volume to a surplus of US$3.93 billion in the first three quarters.

The nation saw continuous trade deficit from January to April and accumulated an unusual high trade deficit of US$10.76 billion. The situation began to turn around in May as the macro- control measures took effect and growth of primary products import slowed.

In the fist nine months, export of machinery and electronic products grew 44 percent year-on-year to US$225.01 billion, accounting for 54.1 percent of the total export volume. Export of hi-tech products reached US$112.95 billion, up 54.3 percent year to year, or 19 percentage points higher than the average export growth rate.

According to GAS statistics, China's import of primary products saw slight decline while import of industrial products soared 33.5 percent year on year in the first three quarters. Among which, auto import increased 4.4 percent to 136,000 and steel import dropped 15.2 percent to 23.93 million tons.

Since the growth of Sino-EU, Sino-US bilateral trade both exceeded 30 percent in the first nine months, Japan, China's largest trade partner for many years, had receded to third place following the European Union and the United States by the end of September.

China enjoyed prosperous bilateral trade with all its first ten partners in the first three quarters, and its trade volume with Canada, Australia and the Republic of Korea grew 56.2 percent, 50.3 percent and 46.7 percent respectively over the same period of last year.

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