Ministry of Commerce: the growth rate of foreign trade will slow down in the second half of the year

The Ministry of Commerce said that in terms of RMB, China's foreign trade imports and exports grew by 27.1% from January to June, reaching an all-time high, which is the result of multiple factors of supply and demand around the world. The most important thing is that demand leads supply. Since the outbreak of the global epidemic, China's foreign trade has further tempered and grown its comprehensive competitiveness in the creative practice of serving and ensuring the production and life of people of all countries. The epidemic has led to a huge gap between supply and demand in the international market. China's foreign trade supply chain system can quickly adapt to changes in international market demand, provide marketable products in time, and meet the needs of epidemic prevention and production and life in various countries and regions. As a responsible country, China has cumulatively provided more than 300 billion masks, 3.7 billion pieces of protective clothing, 4.8 billion testing kits to more than 200 countries and regions, and has provided more than 600 million doses of vaccines to foreign countries, making important contributions to the global fight against epidemic. At the same time, to serve the needs of people from home, work and life, Chinese foreign trade enterprises fully mobilize production resources, improve the level of R & D and design, strengthen product quality control, and export a large number of high-quality consumer goods.

Since the beginning of this year, with the acceleration of vaccination progress, some countries have seen economic recovery and production has gradually resumed, which is a challenge and opportunity for China's foreign trade. On the one hand, China's exports will face the intensification of market competition; on the other hand, countries also need a large number of raw materials and production equipment to resume production, and the demand for our capital goods and intermediate goods has increased significantly. In the first six months of this year, the proportion of consumer goods exports fell somewhat, but the proportion of capital goods and intermediate goods exports reached 76.7%. This proportion is 2.5 percentage points higher than that of the whole of last year. The change you mentioned is precisely the opportunity and driving force for China's foreign trade industry chain and supply chain to better adapt to the needs of the international market and enhance competitiveness. We hope that all countries in the world will return to normal production order as soon as possible, maintain close trade exchanges, and jointly inject vitality into the world economy.

According to our recent monitoring, about 40% of foreign trade enterprises have signed new export orders compared with the same period last year. It is expected that the recovery of external demand and the steady improvement of the domestic economy will continue to support the development of China's foreign trade. However, with the gradual increase of the base figure in the same period last year, the growth rate of foreign trade will slow down in the second half of the year, and the development of foreign trade will still face many uncertain and unstable factors. The global epidemic has its ups and downs and the world economy is fragile to recovery. High prices of raw materials, poor shipping logistics and other problems further squeeze the profit space of foreign trade enterprises, but also affect the willingness of enterprises to accept orders.

At present, we are closely tracking the changes in the foreign trade situation, and in the second half of the year, we will focus on the outstanding difficulties and problems faced by enterprises, and work with relevant departments and localities to study and introduce more targeted policies and measures to effectively reduce the comprehensive costs of foreign trade enterprises. We will take innovation as the driving force, firmly promote the high-quality development of trade, enhance the comprehensive competitiveness of foreign trade, make the industrial foundation of foreign trade more solid, the momentum of development stronger, the circulation channels more smooth, and better serve to build a new development pattern.