China’s foreign trade recorded a steady growth in the first five months of 2019, in spite of increasing uncertainties. Namely, China’s foreign trade of goods grew by 4.1% year on year in the first five months of 2019, reaching 12.1 trillion yuan, according to data from the General Administration of Customs (GAC).
As for exports, they increased 6.1% year on year to 6.5 trillion yuan the same period, with imports increasing 1.8% to 5.6 trillion yuan, leading to a trade surplus of 893.36 billion yuan, Xinhua news agency reported.
In fact, in May alone, Chinese exports and imports amounted for 2.59 trillion yuan, up 2.9% from last year.
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However, last week, the World Bank revised down its forecast for global trade growth in 2019, by 1%, reaching 2.6%. This is the weakest since the global financial crisis, due to trade tensions, among others.
The data that GAC released, indicated that China’s trade with the EU rose 11.7% year on year in the first five months, while trade with the ASEAN was up by 9.4%.
What is more, with cooperation between countries taking part in the Belt and Road Initiatives strengthening, Chinese trade with these countries went up by 9% year on year during the period. What is more, the pace of growth is by 4.9% higher than the total pace.
Leveraging this cooperation, the trade volume between China and Belt and Road countries accounted for 28.8% of China’s total trade volume, marking an increase of 1.3% from the same period last year.
Finally, China’s private businesses also reported faster trade growth in these months. Specifically, their trade volume rose by 11.1% achieving 5.02 trillion yuan. This amount accounts for 41.4% of the overall trade volume in this period, went up by 2.6% year on year.
