City's foreign trade better than average

The city’s foreign trade was better than the national average in the first half of the year, Shanghai Customs said on Wednesday.

From January to June, the gross value of imports and exports was worth 1.58 trillion yuan (US$226.5 billion), down 0.7 percent year on year, accounting for 11.1 percent of China's total in the same period, it said.

China’s foreign trade value year on year during the period was down 3.2 percent.

Shanghai’s export value in the period was 642.27 billion yuan, an increase of 0.7 percent year on year but imports were down 1.7 percent.

Due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, the city’s export value of textiles, such as masks, and its raw materials in the first six months was 39.27 billion yuan, up 61.6 percent year on year, customs said.

It said that although the figure for foreign trade declined year on year in the first quarter due to the pandemic, in the second quarter it started going up.

The number of foreign trade enterprises has steadily increased in the first six months, reaching 45,000 and increasing 5.5 percent year on year, customs said.