China produced a weak trade report for April as March’s surge in exports faded.
Imports fell by more than expected and in March, despite the continuing recovery in global commodity prices in April – especially for iron ore, copper and oil.
Exports in US dollar terms fell 1.8% in April from the same month in 2015 while imports dropped 10.9% in US dollar terms from a year earlier, falling for the 18th month in a row.
The continued decline in imports suggests domestic demand remains weak, despite a pickup in infrastructure spending and record credit growth in the first quarter. That’s despite obvious signs that the services side of the economy is seeing solid growth and demand.
China had a trade surplus of $US45.56 billion in April, up by nearly a third from April, 2015.
The actual trade performance in April was worse than first seems. April 2015 was a very weak month. The Customs Administration said Exports fell 6.4% in April from April 2014.
That was on top of a 15% slide in March of last year. But imports slumped more than 16% after falling 12.7% in March. This brought the trade surplus for the month to $US34.13 billion.
In the four months to April, China’s Customs Administration said that exports to the EU rose 1.3% from a year ago, but shipments to the US and the various AEAN countries both dropped 3.5%.
Imports of iron ore, crude oil and copper posted strong increase in the four months — up 6.1%, 11.8% and 23.1%, respectively. But imports of coal, steel and refined oil fell.
On a monthly basis, imports of these major commodities were weak to mixed on march and on April 2015.
Iron ore imports totalled to 83.92 million tonnes in April compared with 85.77 million in March. That compares to 80.2 million tonnes in April 2015, in line with the 80.5 million tonnes in March of last year.
Over the first four months, imports of ore were 325 million tonnes, up around 6.1% from the same period of 2015.
Oil imports in April totalled 32.58 million tonnes, barely changed from 32.61 tonnes in March. That’s equivalent to 7.96 million barrels a day, up 3.2% from the previous month and near a record 8.04 million in February. China’s crude imports rose to a record quarterly average of 7.34 million barrels a day in the first three months of the year, up 13% from the same period a year ago,
Copper imports totalled 450,000 tonnes against 570,000 tonnes in March, but rose from the 430,000 tonnes imported in April 2015.
In the first four months, the imports totalled 1.88 million tons, 23% up on the same period of 2015 (when imports were down 14% from the same period of 2014). Imports of copper ore and concentrate fell 8% to 1.26 million tons in April from a month earlier. In the first four months, imports jumped 31% to 5.27 million tonnes year on year.
Steel exports slowed in April with 9.08 million tonnes shipped last month, down from 9.98 million tonne sin March.
The April figure took exports over the first four months to 36.9 million tonnes, up 7.6% from the first four months of last year.
