The latest statistics from the Municipal Commerce Bureau shows Qingdao foreign trade, including import and export, reached USD 20.594 billion, up by 22% year-on-year. The export volume reached USD 11.673 billion, up by 13% year-on-year; import reached to USD 8.92 billion, up by 37% year-on-year. The rarely seen growth rate sets up a new record since 2008.

    What should be good is the growth rate of the cargo export/import, which plays the major role in foreign trade, higher than average rate. According to statistics, in this 1st quarter, the Qingdao cargo export and import reached CNY 119.229 billion, up by 28.6% year-on-year. 6.6 percentage points higher than foreign invested companies. Cargo export reached to CNY 69.27 billion, up by 16.1%, accounting for 2.08% of all export of China, 0.1 percentage point higher over the same period of 2016. Cargo import reached CNY 49.959 billion, up by 51.2%.

    All market entities, including state-owned enterprises, foreign invested enterprises and private-owned enterprises all achieved excellent performance. According to statistics, in this 1st quarter, the Qingdao state-owned enterprises import and export increased by 35.2%, foreign-invested companies import and export increased by 15.3%, private-owned companies import and export increased by 35.8%. Private-owned companies play a leading role in the contribution rate. They have added 6.1 percentage points to Qingdao export increase, and 38.8 percentage points to Qingdao import increase.

    In the 1st quarter, both traditional market and emerging markets of Qingdao foreign trade all achieved significant growth. Export to traditional markets increased by 13.5%, and export to countries alongside the Belt & Road and FTZ markets increased by 22.5% and 20.8% respectively. (Shen Junlin)