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| Portfolio |
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| While assisting the Minister in guiding the overall work of MOFCOM, Mr.Yu's portfolio also covers the Department of General Economic Affairs, Department of European Affairs, Department of Foreign Affairs, MOFCOM Party Committee, Department of Retired Cadres’ Affairs, China Foreign Trade Center and China-Europe Association
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| Speech at the Press Conference held by the State Council Information Office |
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| | From: Article type: |
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By Yu Guangzhou, Vice Minister of Commerce,
July 30th, 2004
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good morning. I am very glad to have this opportunity to meet with you here in the State Council Information Office. First, I would like to give you a brief introduction about China’s commercial functioning in the first half of this year.
In the first half of this year, China’s domestic trade, international trade and international economic cooperation kept a good momentum of development, and played a positive role in promoting the stable and rapid development of the national economy. The smooth operation of commerce in China indicates that the central government has adopted a series of efficient macro-control policies and measures, which generated remarkable results. According to the unified arrangement of the State Council, the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) has taken a series of macro-control measures in assistance with other government agencies, including a more stringent examination and approval of foreign-invested projects in overheating sectors, straightening out development zones, curbing blind investment in commercial areas and etc. MOFCOM has also achieved new results in rectifying and standardizing the market economic order and carried out the targeted tasks focused on child food safety, catering safety for folk workers and strengthened the crack-down on counterfeiting and selling counterfeited goods and the IPR protection. Implementation of those measures ensured the new progress of China’s commercial sector.
1. The blooming domestic demand tends to be stabilized, and the growth of commodity prices slows down. In the first half of this year, the aggregate retail value of social consumption goods reached 2.5 trillion Yuan, up by 12.8%. Of that, urban market sales increased by 14.7%, and the rural market sales grew by 9.1%. Despite the price rise and the low base of the same period of last year, the actual grow rate reached its highest point since 1997. The rising consumer price tended to be stabilized, as the price consumption index of urban and rural residents in the first 6 months of this year has a year-on-year increase of 3.6%. Since the late May, supply of important consumption goods, such as grain, cotton and oil, has been improved. Thanks to the timely macro-control measures, domestic demand for production materials has been eased, and the prices went down notably. In June, general production materials prices nationwide continued to fall by 0.32 percentages, based on the 1.4% fall in May.
2. Import and export kept a momentum of sustained and rapid development, and operation quality has been obviously improved. In the first half of the year, the total value of import and export reached US$522.97 billion, up by 39.1%. Of that, export value reached US$258.08 billion, up by 35.7%; import value reached US$264.9 billion, up by 42.6%. Except January, import and export value has maintained a high increase rate of above 20% in 23 successive months, and 19 months of that witnessed the growth of over 30%. Increase margin of electromechanical products and hi-tech products in the first half of the year reached 46.3% and 60.9% respectively, surpassing the total increase margin of export by 10.6 and 25.2 percentage points, and taking up 54.2% and 27.4%of the total export value. As the phase-in of China’s macro-control measures, import value has been less than the export, and the situation of the first 4-month-long consecutive deficit has been changed.
3. Scale of FDI attraction has been expanded, and foreign investment structure has been further optimized. In the first half of this year, contractual value of FDI reached US$72.7 billion, up by 42.7% year on year; the actual utilized value reached US$33.9 billion, up by 12%. Structure of FDI attracted has been constantly optimized, and FDI in the Hi-tech sector increased significantly. In the first 6 months, contractual value of specific equipments, general equipments and computer & communication equipments, which are the three major manufacturing sectors in high-tech industry, have been increased by 195%, 75%, and 73%. The number of foreign invested R&D centers in China surpassed 600, and more than 30 regional headquarters of transnational enterprises have been established in China.
4. New progress has been made in investing overseas, the “Going Global” process has been accelerated. In the overseas direct investment of non-financial enterprises, the value of Chinese contractual investment was USD 890 million and that of actually utilized was USD 670 million. The turnover of overseas engineering contracting was USD 6.55 billion and the value of newly signed contracts was USD 10.93 billion, respectively growing by 28.1% and 32.7% year-on-year. The turnover of overseas labor cooperation was USD 1.59 billion and the value of newly signed contracts was USD 1.66 billion, respectively growing by 11% and 31.4% year-on-year. By the end of June, there had been altogether 526,000 labor staff of different types, 41,000 persons more than the same period of last year.
5. Further progress has been made in bilateral and multilateral economic and trade relations as well as regional economic cooperation.China has maintained excellent economic and trade links with the overwhelming majority of countries (regions) and its economic and trade cooperation with major economies and its neighboring countries (regions) has been further deepened.
China has seriously implemented its WTO commitments and continuously opened up. At the same time, we are active in participating in the new round of WTO negotiation and playing a constructive role for the improvement of the multilateral trading system. Not long ago, 9 countries including New Zealand, Singapore, and South Africa have formally declared that they recognized China’s full market economy status, which has created more favorable conditions for the economic and trade cooperation between China and these countries.
China is actively participating in regional economic cooperation. Smooth progress has been made for the CEPA between the mainland China and HK and Macao; New progress has been made in the FTA negotiation between China and ASEAN; China has also initiated FTA negotiations with SACU (Southern African Customs Union) and GCC (Gulf Countries Council); stable development has been achieved in the feasibility study of FTA possibility between China and New Zealand, Chile and other countries.
In commercial sector, there exist some problems concerning us. There is a continuous drop of final consumption rate and it remains difficult to further stimulate consumption; Trade restrictive measures against China frequently took place, resulting in unfair treatment for Chinese enterprises in international marketplace; International oil price remains high level, stockpiling of some commodities increases and hence ties up funds; Domestic tensions arising from the short supply of coal, electricity, oil and transportation haven’t been fundamentally eased, which has lifted the production and operation cost of China’s export enterprises; Consumption environment and market order is to be improved and regulated, and phenomena like excessive investment and random land expropriation still exist.
In order to sustain a good momentum of development for all the commerce-related work, and make contribution for the sustained, fast, coordinated and healthy development of national economy, the MOFCOM, for the second half of this year, will follow the central government’s policy to strengthen and improve macro-control, establish science-based philosophy of development, tackle existing difficulties and problems in our work and turn unfavorable factors to favorable ones. Our priorities will be as follows:
--- To make efforts in guiding and expanding consumption, ensure the stability and growth of domestic market, strengthen the building of market system and the rectification and standardization of market economic order.
--- To deepen the reform and make remarkable progress in integrating domestic and foreign trade so as to have domestic and foreign trade better complement and support one another.
--- To stably expand opening-up, faithfully implement China’s WTO accession commitments, actively participate in the new round negotiation of WTO, improve trade environment and ensure a sustained and rapid growth of China’s foreign trade.
--- To stabilize, substantiate and improve foreign investment utilization and maintain a stable growth of foreign investment.
--- To vigorously implement the strategy of “going global”, enhance China’s economic and trade cooperation with other countries (regions) and realize the common development.
--- To effectively carry out the work of fair trade, positively respond to trade frictions and concretely safeguard China’s economic interests.
Based on the development trend of domestic and international economic situation, it’s estimated on a preliminary basis, that: This year’s foreign trade value would increase by 20% and exceed USD 1 trillion; the scale of actually utilized foreign investment inflow will remain USD 50 billion and China’s overseas investment will exceed USD 2 billion. The aggregate consumer goods value for the whole year will grow up by over 10%, reaching RMB 5 trillion Yuan; the total sales value of production materials will increase by 15% or so, reaching RMB 10 trillion Yuan.
That’s an overview of China’s commerce work.
Next, my colleagues and I would like to take up your questions.
(News Source: Public Information Service Center)
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