Ministry of Commerce spokesperson Shen Danyang said at a regular press conference on May 15 that according to preliminary statistics from the General Administration of Customs, in April 2015, the country’s import and export volume was US$318.5 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 11.1%. Among them, exports were US$176.3 billion, a decrease of 6.4%; imports were US$142.2 billion, a decrease of 16.2%; and the surplus was US$34.1 billion, an increase of 82.9%. From a regional perspective, affected by factors such as the passive appreciation of the RMB, China’s exports to Japan and the EU fell by 12.9% and 10.1% respectively. Imports from South Africa, Brazil, Russia and India fell by 37.2%, 25.3%, 22.3% and 21.4% respectively, which together lowered the overall import growth by 2.1 percentage points.
Foreign trade data in April showed negative growth for both import and export, but the decline in exports narrowed. “Under the combined influence of sluggish domestic and foreign demand, sluggish international commodity prices, passive appreciation of the RMB and other unfavorable factors, my country’s import and export still recorded negative growth in April, but the decline narrowed by 2.6 percentage points from the previous month. Among them, the decline in exports narrowed by 8.4 percentage points percentage points, and the decline in imports has expanded.” Shen Danyang said.
In response to the passive appreciation of the RMB against non-U.S. currencies, which has led to certain pressure on exports, Shen Danyang said that since the beginning of this year, global trade has been generally sluggish, especially the export growth of major economies and some emerging market countries has generally been negative. “In such a situation Against this background, our exports have achieved slight growth, which is a good performance among the world’s major economies and major trading countries.”
Shen Danyang pointed out that the current situation facing foreign trade is very severe, or that foreign trade faces unprecedented pressure to maintain steady growth. This is caused not only by the sluggish global economic recovery and sluggish external demand, but also by factors such as rising domestic factor costs, difficult and expensive financing for companies, and other factors.
“Needless to say, the world’s major non-US dollar currencies, including the yen, euro, ruble, etc., have generally depreciated, while the renminbi has basically remained stable. This has objectively weakened the competitive advantage of China’s export commodities and increased the foreign exchange collection risks of enterprises. , increasing the operating pressure on foreign trade companies.” Shen Danyang said, “In view of the increasing risk of exchange rate fluctuations of major currencies around the world, we encourage financial institutions to develop more exchange rate hedging products, and also recommend that companies further strengthen exchange rate risk management , use more exchange rate hedging tools to expand the scale of RMB settlement and enhance awareness and ability to deal with exchange rate risks. At the same time, we also hope that all countries will strengthen monetary policy coordination and jointly maintain sustained global financial stability.”
