'China will work harder to reduce trade surplus'

FE Team | Published: July 12, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

BEIJING, July 11 (AFP): China will work harder to cut the nation's fast-expanding trade surplus, the commerce ministry said today, a day after data showed the balance hit an all-time high in June.
"We will continue to take measures to reduce the trade surplus and expand imports so as to realise more balanced trade," ministry spokesman Wang Xinpei told reporters.
Wang added the government was also looking into some financial measures to boost imports but he did did not explain what those measures would be.
China announced yesterday that the trade surplus for June soared 85.5 per cent to hit a record monthly high of 26.91 billion dollars.
In the first six months of the year, the trade surplus jumped 83.1 per cent to 112.53 billion dollars.
Wang attributed the dramatic jump in June to manufacturers rushing to ship orders before a range of export tax rebates were slashed or removed on July 1.
China announced on June 19 that it would cut or remove export tax rebates for 2,831 commodities, or a third of total exports, from the beginning of this month in another effort to bring some balance to the trade account.
Wang said the trade surplus growth was expected to slow in the second half of 2007 but he did not give any forecast for the full year.
"We expect the growth rate in the second half of the year will slow down, which is what we would like to see," he said.
China's top economic planning said in May that the trade surplus was likely to hit 250-300 billion dollars in 2007, up from a record 177.5 billion dollars last year and a massive increase from 31.98 billion dollars in 2004.
The surplus has been a constant source of friction with its major trading partners, mainly the United States and the European Union, where jobs have been lost as industries have been unable to compete with cheap Chinese imports.
Beijing has been routinely accused of keeping the Chinese currency artificially low to make its goods cheaper, giving its exporters an unfair competitive edge as a result.