On the afternoon of March 6, the second session of the 14th National People's Congress held a press conference in the press conference hall of the Media Center in Beijing. In response to the question of how to view the foreign trade situation this year, Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao said: "To consolidate the basic foreign trade and foreign investment, we are confident and confident."
"We judge that this year's foreign trade is still in a very severe situation." Wang Wentao said that on the one hand, many international organizations expect that the global economic growth rate in 2024 will still be lower than the historical average, and the downward pressure on external demand is still great. On the other hand, trade protectionism and unilateralism are on the rise, and the International Monetary Fund report shows that about 3,000 trade restrictive measures were implemented globally in 2023, much higher than the 1,100 in 2019. The WTO forecasts that the volume of global trade in goods will grow by 3.3% this year, far below the historical average of 4.9% in previous years. Spillover factors such as geopolitical conflicts and the global "super election year" will also bring a lot of uncertainties.
Wang Wentao said that while seeing difficulties, there are also some good signs. In the first two months of this year, there have been many positive trends. For example, from January to February this year, imports and exports are expected to continue the trend of growth since October last year. "Overall, we see this trend is going up. The small peak of imports and exports before the Spring Festival in previous years has continued until the Spring Festival this year. Some China-Europe freight trains, ocean freighters, cross-border e-commerce and overseas warehouses are still busy."
Wang Wentao also mentioned that last year's "new three" export growth of 30%, according to the general economic law, to develop rapidly on the basis of 30% this year is not necessarily realistic, the forecast is a steady development trend. Overall, the development of foreign trade relies on the industrial base, factor endowments, and innovation capabilities are constantly strengthening, and China's export commodities are climbing up the value chain. Moreover, China actively opens up, import market opportunities are also expanding, import and export have great potential, and foreign trade has shown strong resilience.
"In response to the difficulties and uncertainties faced by foreign trade, we have made efforts in policy. At the end of last year, we made a prediction that 'people are diligent and spring comes early', and we made full preparations in advance and went all out to stabilize foreign trade." Wang Wentao said, mainly from three aspects to increase support, first, financial services, will further strengthen the financial service guarantee for foreign trade enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, hit the lead. Second, in terms of trade promotion, China will continue to organize the Canton Fair, Import Expo, service Trade Fair, consumer Expo, digital trade Fair and other exhibitions, publish trade promotion information and country trade guides, and encourage enterprises to participate in various exhibitions at home and abroad. Third, personnel exchanges, the recent resumption of flights between China and foreign countries, will continue to promote together with relevant departments to facilitate the visa application of business people, support enterprises to carry out trade promotion and supply and procurement docking.
Information source: China Press, China News Network
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