Foreign trade in 2018 will keep up sound momentum

Despite uncertainties in international trade, China’s import and export in 2018 are expected to continue its sound development momentum, a Chinese trade official said.

In the first 11 months, China’s foreign trade reached 25.14 trillion yuan ($3.85 trillion), an increase of 15.6 percent over the same period last year, Gao Feng, spokesman for China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), told the Global Times on Thursday.

“In US dollar terms, foreign trade in the first 11 months reached $3.70 trillion, an increase of 12 percent year-on-year. Assuming nothing unforeseen occurs, our full-year foreign trade will continue its relatively rapid growth and might be more than $4 trillion again,” Gao said.

“International trade has played a significant role in the growth of the economy. In recent years, we have pushed forward supply-side structural reform in the sector and improved trading enterprises’ efficiency in labor, capital, resource and the environmental terms,” Gao continued.

“In matters of variety, quality and class, our products have improved and are now more intelligent and middle-to-high-end. Overall, our foreign trade is changing from high speed to high quality, with the potential for sound development being gradually realized,” Gao noted.

The IMF has predicted global growth of 3.7 percent in 2018 versus 3.6 percent in 2017.

“The IMF also forecast that growth of international trade in goods and services would be 4.0 percent, 0.6 percentage points higher than average growth from 2013 to 2017, also more than the growth of the entire world economy. All parties are generally optimistic about global economic prospects next year,” Gao said.

Gao also pointed out uncertainties and instabilities in international trade.

Domestically, we can see foreign trade enterprises improving their productivity, driven by innovation. These enterprises are also increasing their contribution to foreign trade in terms of technology, Gao added.

With the improvement in total factor productivity, higher quality development of China’s international trade will be achieved gradually, Gao concluded.