Daily Times

Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region saw its foreign trade with the five Central Asian countries increase by 92.2 percent to 75.11 billion yuan (about 10.7 billion U.S. dollars) in the first four months of the year, according to Urumqi customs.

The figure accounts for 43.4 percent of the country’s total trade volume with the five Central Asian countries, namely, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, during the period. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan have become the three major trading partners of the region in the first four months of the year. Among them, Xinjiang’s import and export to Kazakhstan reached 35.48 billion yuan, an increase of 121.7 percent.

Wen Ping, an official with the Urumqi customs, said Xinjiang will continue to give full play to the policy and location advantages of the core area of the Silk Road Economic Belt, continuously optimize customs clearance facilitation measures, smooth the industrial and supply chains, seize opportunities for economic and trade cooperation with Central Asia, and promote high-level opening-up and high-quality development. Meanwhile, the foreign trade of China’s economic hub Shanghai registered a steady recovery this year, customs data shows.

In the first four months, the total value of Shanghai’s foreign trade reached 1.39 trillion yuan (about 198.1 billion U.S. dollars), up 13.5 percent year on year. Taking a closer look, export value stood at 558.65 billion yuan, up 16.3 percent year on year while import value reached 834.57 billion yuan, up 11.6 percent year on year.

In April, Shanghai’s imports and exports soared by 57.9 percent year on year to 346.63 billion yuan. In the first four months, Shanghai exported 389.87 billion yuan of mechanical and electrical products, up 21 percent year on year, accounting for 69.8 percent of the city’s total export value. Imports of consumer goods, which took up 22.9 percent of the total import value from January to April, registered a year-on-year growth of 18.4 percent.