General

The Information Office of the State Council today held a press conference on imports and exports in the first half of the year. Li Kuiwen, spokesperson of the General Administration of Customs and Director of the Department of Statistics and Analysis, introduced at the meeting that in recent years, my country's endogenous driving force for foreign trade has been continuously strengthened, and private enterprises have gradually become my country's largest foreign trade operator. In the first half of this year, the import and export of private enterprises was 8.64 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 35.1%, accounting for 47.8% of my country's total foreign trade import and export value, an increase of 2.8 percentage points. Among them, exports were 5.59 trillion yuan, an increase of 35.6%; imports were 3.05 trillion yuan, an increase of 34.3%.

In the first half of the year, the characteristics and highlights of my country's private enterprises' import and export mainly included:

Private enterprises have more vitality and resilience in import and export. Private enterprises take advantage of independent and flexible production and operation, keenly capture market opportunities, quickly respond to domestic and international market demands, and demonstrate greater vitality and resilience in foreign trade development. In the first half of the year, the growth rates of my country's private enterprises' imports and exports, imports and exports were 8, 7.5, and 8.4 percentage points higher than the overall growth rate respectively. Among them, the export value of commodities such as household appliances, computers, medical materials and medicines increased by 46.2%, 38.7%, and 70.8% respectively; the export value of commodities such as metal ore and ore, unwrought copper and copper materials, and cosmetics increased by 66% respectively , 65.2%, 38.8%.

The number of private enterprises with actual import and export performance increased. In the first half of the year, there were 397,000 private enterprises with actual import and export performance, a year-on-year increase of 37,000, accounting for 82.8% of the total number of import and export enterprises.

Regional development has become more coordinated. In the first half of the year, the import and export growth rate of private enterprises in the central and western regions reached 44.6%, which was 9.5% higher than the overall growth rate of private enterprises. Among the top 10 provinces in terms of import and export growth of private enterprises, 8 are from the central and western regions of my country.

Market development has been continuously strengthened. In the first half of the year, private enterprises' imports and exports to traditional markets such as the European Union, the United States, Japan, and South Korea increased by 31.4%, 45.7%, 19.8% and 28.3% respectively. At the same time, private enterprises' imports and exports to countries along the “Belt and Road” increased by 34.5%, of which imports and exports to ASEAN increased by 37.3%.