China's $7.24b trade deficit first in six years
China reported its first monthly trade deficit in nearly six years in March, a shift expected to be shortlived that may give Beijing only a slight respite from pressure to revalue its currency.
The $7.24 billion trade deficit in March reported Saturday by China’s customs administration was China’s first since a $2.26 billion deficit in April 2004. Though expected, it was significantly bigger than many economists had forecast. It follows four straight months of narrowing trade surpluses.
The return to deficit after many years of surplus comes as China is being pressured to let the value of its currency rise against the dollar — a key source of friction with the U.S. and other trading partners.
Zheng Yuesheng, chief of the customs agency’s statistics department, said the 60 percent rise in China’s imports in January-March, compared to a year earlier, was a boon to “the balanced growth of the world economy.”
“This kind of trade deficit is healthy because it appears when exports and imports both grow rapidly,” Zheng said on national television.
Zheng echoed other officials in predicting that China’s trade will soon return to surplus, though he said that it will likely tend to be more balanced than in the past.
In March, China’s exports totaled $112.11 billion in March, up 24.3 percent from a year earlier. Imports reached US$119.35 billion, up 66 percent compared to the same period last year, the Customs Administration said in data posted on its Web site.
In the first three months of this year, China still posted a global trade surplus of $14.5 billion, down 76.7 percent from the first quarter of 2009. The trade surplus was $7.6 billion in February and the combined January-February surplus was $21.8 billion.
China is due to announce other economic data for the first quarter on Thursday.
Exports plunged last year as demand evaporated in markets stricken by the global recession. But massive stimulus spending helped rekindle growth at home, and the economy expanded by 10.7 percent in the final quarter of 2009.
“China’s trade deficit will likely prove temporary. With an anticipated recovery in developed economies this year, Chinese exports should improve gradually over the coming months,” Jing Ulrich, head of China equities for J.P.Morgan, said in a note to clients.
Economists say the deficit for March reflected relatively weak exports to the United States and other major markets. Strong imports of commodities and components to fuel China’s own booming industrial sector contributed to the 66 percent jump in imports — albeit from a relatively low base the year before when China was also just emerging from a slowdown.
“Surging raw materials prices, for crude oil, iron ore, and nonferrous metals, which China buys a lot of for its own strong domestic economy, are another factor,” said An Yun, an analyst at Chang Xin Asset Management.
China recorded a $9.87 billion trade surplus with the United States in March and a $30.7 billion surplus for the first quarter, the customs figures showed.
Exports to the United States rose nearly 20 percent in March year-on-year, while imports climbed 43 percent.
China’s trade surplus with the European Union was $7 billion in March and $29.3 billion for the first three months of the year.
Chinese officials insist that the stability of China’s yuan is crucial because the trade sector remains vulnerable to weaknesses elsewhere.
Beijing broke a decades-long link with the U.S. dollar in 2005, allowing the yuan to rise by about 20 percent through late 2008. The government slammed on the brakes after the crisis hit and has since held its currency steady against the greenback, saying China cannot afford further change after losing millions of factory jobs to the plunge in global demand.
Critics say the yuan is undervalued by up to 40 percent, giving its exporters an unfair advantage and swelling its trade surplus.
Some U.S. lawmakers have pushed for President Barack Obama to have China declared a currency manipulator in a Treasury Department report that was due out this month and could have added to tensions between the two countries over their chronic trade imbalance.
In a conciliatory gesture, Washington postponed the report ahead of a visit by President Hu Jintao to the U.S. to attend a nuclear conference. Following a brief stopover in Beijing by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for talks with a top Chinese official, Wang Qishan, many expect Beijing to allow at least a modest change in the yuan’s value.
Economists caution, however, that any shift will be gradual and is unlikely to narrow U.S. and European trade deficits and create jobs.
Supporters of a loosening of controls on the Chinese currency argue that keeping the yuan’s value steady is helping to fuel inflation and limiting Beijing’s ability to manage the economy effectively.
“China can go a lot further in internationalizing its economy and promoting world growth by making its currency more flexible,” Pieter Bottelier, an economist who formerly headed the World Bank’s Beijing office, told a conference in Shanghai this week.
Source: AP