AFP, Beijing :
China’s stuttering economy suffered another blow in November as export growth slowed sharply and imports surprisingly contracted, government data showed Monday, resulting in a record monthly trade surplus.
Exports from the world’s second-largest economy expanded 4.7 percent year-on-year to $211.66 billion in November, while imports dropped 6.7 percent to $157.19 billion, the General Administration of Customs said.
The surplus soared 61.4 percent to a record $54.47 billion in the month, Customs said, beating August’s previous record of $49.8 billion.
Median forecasts had been for exports to increase 8.0 percent and imports to rise 3.9 percent, according to a survey of 16 economists by Dow Jones Newswires.
The latest figures come as China is assailed by industrial weakness, falling property prices and high corporate and local government debt burdens, prompting the central bank last month to cut benchmark interest rates for the first time in more than two years.
Gross domestic product (GDP) grew an annual 7.3 percent in the third quarter, the slowest since the height of the global financial crisis in early 2009.
The sharp slowdown in export growth means there is a risk growth this year will come in below 7.5 percent “as both domestic and external demand weakened”, ANZ economists Liu Li-Gang and Zhou Hao said in a report reacting to the data.
China’s stuttering economy suffered another blow in November as export growth slowed sharply and imports surprisingly contracted, government data showed Monday, resulting in a record monthly trade surplus.
Exports from the world’s second-largest economy expanded 4.7 percent year-on-year to $211.66 billion in November, while imports dropped 6.7 percent to $157.19 billion, the General Administration of Customs said.
The surplus soared 61.4 percent to a record $54.47 billion in the month, Customs said, beating August’s previous record of $49.8 billion.
Median forecasts had been for exports to increase 8.0 percent and imports to rise 3.9 percent, according to a survey of 16 economists by Dow Jones Newswires.
The latest figures come as China is assailed by industrial weakness, falling property prices and high corporate and local government debt burdens, prompting the central bank last month to cut benchmark interest rates for the first time in more than two years.
Gross domestic product (GDP) grew an annual 7.3 percent in the third quarter, the slowest since the height of the global financial crisis in early 2009.
The sharp slowdown in export growth means there is a risk growth this year will come in below 7.5 percent “as both domestic and external demand weakened”, ANZ economists Liu Li-Gang and Zhou Hao said in a report reacting to the data.
