By Rui Hu, EDITOR

On July 17, Chongqing Customs District P.R. China announced in a press conference that in the first half of this year, Chongqing’s total import and export value was 266.36 billion RMB(38.6 billion USD), up 16.48% over the same period last year. This ranks 11th in the country, of which the export value was 171.12 billion RMB, up 16.49%, and import value was 95.24 billion RMB, up 16.45%.

Foreign trade developed steadily under the significant effect of open platforms

Li Yu, Deputy Director of Chongqing Customs, said that as the whole country, Chongqing’s foreign trade showed a steady growth trend in the first half of the year with the following highlights. Firstly, the growth rate of import and export of processing trade exceeded 20%. In the first half of this year, Chongqing’s import and export value of processing trade was 133.65 billion RMB, up 21.8%, accounting for 50.2% of Chongqing’s total foreign trade value in the same period, up 2.2%.

Meanwhile, Chongqing’s import and export to the EU and ASEAN has seen rapid growth. In the first half of the year, Chongqing’s total import and export value to the EU and ASEAN were 50.52 billion RMB and 50.48 billion RMB respectively, up 21.9% and 47.7%, which together accounted for 37.9% of Chongqing’s total foreign trade value in the same period. In the first half of the year, Chongqing’s foreign trade to countries along the Belt and Road gained considerable momentum, with a total import and export value of 73.42 billion RMB, an increase of 32%. Compared with the growth rate of 5.4% in the first half of 2018 and 2% in 2018, the growth rate was increased by 26.6% and 30.1% respectively.

In addition, open platforms have played a more prominent role. In the first half of the year, the total import and export value of Chongqing’s open platforms such as the Special Customs Supervision Zone and the Bonded Logistics Center (Type B) reached 172.91 billion RMB. This is up 32.2%, 15.7% higher than the overall growth rate of Chongqing’s foreign trade in the same period, accounting for 64.9% of Chongqing’s total foreign trade value in the same period, and contributing 111.7% to Chongqing’s import and export growth.

High-tech products accounted for 70% of Chongqing’s total export value in the same period

Li Yu introduced that in the first half of the year, Chongqing exported a total of 121.07 billion RMB of high-tech products such as computers, integrated circuits and central processing components, an increase of 27%, accounting for 70% of Chongqing’s total export value in the same period, driving Chongqing’s overall export growth by 17.5%. However, exports of general machinery, motorcycles, auto parts, and automobiles all declined slightly.

Moreover, integrated circuits, automatic data processing equipment components, and mineral commodities have played an evident role in driving import growth. In the first half of the year, Chongqing imported 37.04 billion RMB of integrated circuits and 2.7 billion RMB of automatic data processing equipment components. This is an increase of 71.6% and 86.7% respectively, which together accounted for 41.7% of Chongqing’s total import value in the same period, contributing 124.2% to Chongqing’s import growth. In the same period, imports of iron ore, manganese ore, copper ore, and other mineral commodities totaled 5.41 billion, up 58.5% RMB.

Furthermore, foreign-invested enterprises have boasted a favorable development trend. In the first half of the year, the import and export value of Chongqing’s foreign-invested enterprises was 166.93 billion RMB, an increase of 23.6%, accounting for 62.7% of Chongqing’s total foreign trade value in the same period.

Source: CQCB