China Exports Unexpectedly Drop With Imports in Drag on Economy shippingtribune/?p=27264 China’s exports and imports both unexpectedly declined in June in a sign that weakness in global and domestic demand will intensify the slowdown in the world’s second-biggest economy. Overseas shipments fell 3.1 percent from a year earlier, the General Administration of Customssaid in Beijing today, compared with the median estimate of a 3.7 percent gain in a Bloomberg News survey of 39 economists. Imports declined 0.7 percent after a 0.3 percent drop in May. The report follows May’s collapse in export gains after a crackdown on fake invoices that inflated data in the first four months of the year. Trade growth below the government’s target of 8 percent for the year and a cash crunch that sent interbank borrowing costs to records last month will test Premier Li Keqiang’s tolerance of a slowdown that may leave expansion below the government’s annual goal. “The story of China economic growth this year has changed — it’s no longer a story about modest recovery but about where the government’s bottom line is,” Xu Gao, Beijing-based chief economist with Everbright Securities Co. who previously worked for the World Bank, said before the release. “Without government support, China’s growth will continue to slide.” The nation’s money-market cash squeeze is likely to reduce credit growth this year by 750 billion yuan ($122 billion), or an amount equivalent to the size of Vietnam’s economy, based on the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of analysts. Ship Orders China Rongsheng Heavy Industries Group Holdings Ltd. (1101), the nation’s biggest shipyard outside state control, said July 5 that it had sought government financial support as orders plunged, two days after it said that some idled contract workers had surrounded the entrance of its main factory in Jiangsu province. The order book at Chinese shipbuilders fell 23 percent at the end of May from a year earlier, according to the China Association of National Shipbuilding Industry. One-third of the nation’s yards facing the danger of closing have failed to get orders “for a very long period of time,” Wang Jinlian, the group’s secretary general, said July 4. The International Monetary Fund yesterday cut its global economic-growth forecast to 3.1 percent for 2013 from 3.3 percent projected in April, the fifth straight reduction. That would be unchanged from the 2012 pace. GDP Estimates China’s economic expansion probably slowed for a second quarter in the three months ended June 30. Gross domestic product rose 7.5 percent from a year earlier, according to the median of 34 economist estimates in a Bloomberg News survey ahead of data due July 15. That’s down from 7.7 percent in the first quarter and 7.9 percent in the last three months of 2012. The central bank will publish data on credit and money supply over the next week. The statistics bureau on July 15 will also provide June numbers on industrial production and retail sales along with first-half fixed-asset investment. China’s consumer price index rose 2.7 percent in June from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday in Beijing, compared with a median estimate of 2.5 percent in a Bloomberg News survey and a 2.1 percent gain in May. Producer prices fell 2.7 percent. –Zhou Xin, with assistance from Nicholas Wadhams in Beijing and James Mayger in Tokyo. Editors: Scott Lanman, Sunil Jagtiani. Source: Bloomberg
Posted on: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 05:17:30 +0000
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