Shanghai's foreign trade maintains steady growth

Shanghai's imports and exports in the first 10 months this year topped 3.46 trillion yuan (US$483.63 billion), amid measures supporting foreign trade enterprises in the city.

With a 5.3 percent increase over the same period last year, the city's foreign trade volume maintained the overall steady growth and accounted for 10 percent of China's total foreign trade imports and exports.

Of which, exports added up to 1.41 trillion yuan, an increase of 12.5 percent, while imports edged up 0.9 percent to 2.05 trillion yuan in the city.

It is worth noting that foreign-invested enterprises contributed more than three-fifths of Shanghai's imports and exports, while private enterprises showed strong vitality.

During the 10-month period, foreign enterprises posted 2.12 trillion yuan of imports and exports, up 5.1 percent annually and accounting for 61.2 percent of the city's total. Foreign trade by private companies, meanwhile, soared 13.6 percent to 1.01 trillion yuan – a pace 8.3 percentage points faster than the city's overall growth.

Shanghai's imports and exports to countries and regions along the Belt and Road, meanwhile, reached around 783 billion yuan in January-October, up 6.8 percent, while trade with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations rose 6.6 percent to approximate 467 billion yuan.

The city highlighted the sound growth momentum of its exports of new energy products.

In the first 10 months, Shanghai exported 958.08 billion yuan of electromechanical products, up 11.4 percent. Of these, exports of lithium-ion batteries, electric-manned vehicles and solar cells totaled around 20 billion yuan, 65 billion yuan and 7 billion yuan, respectively, up 4.6 times, 1.2 times and 53 percent from a year earlier.

In addition, imports of some bulk products grew significantly, especially soybeans and some meat products.

Amid the international energy market turmoil and the supply and demand tension, the import prices for natural gas, coal, refined oil, aluminum ore and its concentrates all rose faster, pushing up the value of imports.

Over the first 10 months, Shanghai's imports of the above four types of products surged by 16.6 percent, 68 percent, 21.7 percent, and 1 times, respectively. Soybean imports, meanwhile, totaled 41.14 billion yuan, up 26.3 percent, and beef imports expanded 20.5 percent to 19.6 billion yuan.

In a bid to boost the steady growth and improve the quality of foreign trade, the city last month issued a series of measures, which came into effect on November 1.

Measures were proposed considering five major aspects, namely, to protect the stable operation of foreign trade enterprises, to increase financial services support for international trade, to promote the optimization of the foreign trade import and export structure, to support the development of new business forms and models of foreign trade, and to strengthen services for foreign trade enterprises.

The measures have effectively stimulated market vitality and significantly restored the momentum of foreign trade development.