On May 7, the General Administration of Customs released the information. According to this data, China’s dollar-denominated exports in April surpassed expectations.
Moreover, compared with the same period in 2019, exports rose by 3.5% in April of this year. At the same imports fell by 14.2 in the same period.
As stated above, exports surpassed expectations, as economists expected that exports would decline by 15.7% compared with April 2019.
For example, in March exports dropped by 6.6% in comparison with the same period last year. Meanwhile, imports declined by 0.09% in March.
Also, China’s trade surplus for April reached $45.34 billion. This result was also higher than expected by economists. They expected that surplus for April would reach $6.35 billion. Moreover, the trade surplus in March was $19.9 billion.
It is worth mentioning that, China’s trade surplus in April was the largest since December 2019. As a reminder, in December the country’s surplus reached $47 billion.
The coronavirus pandemic changed the plans of companies as well as individuals. However, China’s medical exports likely rose in April. The country shipped health-care goods to countries around the world.
Last month, a surge in the exports of antivirus medical supplies with the export value of such jumped from about $141 million to more than $423 million during the same month.
The economy of China and coronavirus pandemic
In many countries, healthcare professionals are struggling to deal with various challenges, including the lack of supplies. In April, China exported medical supplies worth millions of dollars.
For example, China exported 27.8 billion face masks and 130 million protective suits. Moreover, exports of medical supplies could have boosted headline export growth in March and April by 2.7 percentage points compared with the same period last year.
Moreover, factories were also likely fulfilling a backlog of orders, as workers gradually returned to work after an extender lockdown.
Unfortunately, it would be hard to maintain export growth in the following months. Thus, growth will most likely decline in May and June.
Importantly, companies across the country are reopening as the daily number of new cases is quite low.
Nevertheless, the situation remains serious across the world. The number of confirmed cases surpassed 3.7 million. As a result, it will take time to improve the situation. The U.S. has the largest number of confirmed cases with more than 1 million patients.
Hopefully, the economy of China is recovering and domestic tourism is returning and this is good news. China should work with other countries to support the global economy.
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