FILE PHOTO: A truck transports a container at a port in Qingdao, Shandong province, China July 11, 2019. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo
April 14, 2020
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s exports and imports slowed their declines in March after plunging in the previous two months, but a sure-footed recovery in trade was months away as the coronavirus outbreak shuts down many economies and sharply lowers global demand.
Overseas shipments fell 6.6% in March from the same period a year earlier, customs data showed on Tuesday, improving from a 17.2% slide in January-February, as exporters rushed to clear a backlog of orders after forced government production shutdowns.
Analysts had forecast shipments to drop 14% from a year earlier.
Yet, while the trade figures were not bad as feared, analysts say the export and overall growth outlook for the world’s second-biggest economy remains grim as the pandemic has brought business activity across the globe to a standstill.
“The above-expectation March trade figures do not mean that the future is carefree,” said Zhang Yi, Beijing-based chief economist at Zhonghai Shengrong Capital Managemen.
“A decline in exports throughout the second quarter has been the market consensus now and a drop of 20% or more is a high-probability event. For policymakers, more policies should be rolled out to address the possible societal issues stemming from mass-scale unemployment,” Zhang said.
The data showed Imports slid 0.9% from a year earlier, also above market expectations of a 9.5% drop, which the customs attributed to improving domestic demand. They had fallen 4% in the first two months of the year.
The trade report is likely to reinforce market expectations that China’s first quarter gross domestic product data, set for release on Friday, will show a contraction – the first quarterly slump since at least 1992.
The pandemic’s sweeping impact on businesses and consumers has triggered an unprecedented burst of stimulus from policymakers around the world in the past two months.
Customs spokesman Li Kuiwen told a news conference that China’s trade showed some signs of recovery in March as domestic demand returns to normal, but he emphasised that difficulties facing foreign trade cannot be underestimated.
The World Trade Organization last week forecast that goods trade would shrink more steeply this year than in the global financial crisis a decade ago before rebounding in 2021 as the COVID-19 pandemic recedes.
Beijing is trying to restart its engines after weeks of near paralysis to contain the pandemic that had severely restricted business activity, flow of goods and the daily life of people.
But analysts warn it could take months before the economy returns to normal as the virus has spread rapidly around the world, virtually shutting down many countries and raising the risk of a steep global recession this year.
Julian Evans-Pritchard, senior China economist at Capital Economics, in a note to clients, that “headwinds to exports are set to intensify.”
“Shutdowns in China’s major export markets mean that the contraction in shipments is set to deepen further in the months ahead.”
(Reporting by Gabriel Crossley, Stella Qiu and Lusha Zhang; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
