CCTV News: On April 14, the State Council Information Office held a regular press conference on economic data in the first quarter.
At the press conference, a reporter asked: From the reported data, we noticed that imports have shown a downward trend this quarter. What is the reason? How do you view future imports?
Lu Daliang, spokesperson of the General Administration of Customs and director of the Statistical Analysis Department, responded that the import growth rate in the first quarter was the result of the joint action of multiple factors, and different commodities rose and fell. Among them, affected by the decline in international commodity prices, in the first quarter, the average import prices of iron ore sand and coal in my country fell by more than 20%, and the average import prices of crude oil and soybeans also fell by 5.7% and 16.6% respectively. These price factors affect the overall import growth rate by 2.6 percentage points. In addition, compared with last year, the first quarter of this year was 2 working days less, and this factor also affected the import growth rate by about 2 percentage points.
On the look, domestic industrial production has grown rapidly, driving the increase in imports of parts and equipment. In March, my country's manufacturing PMI continued to be in the expansion range, and the manufacturing prosperity level continued to rebound. Among them, the production demand of industries such as computer communication electronic equipment, railway, ship, aerospace equipment, etc. has been released rapidly, and the import of key components and high-tech equipment required by related industries has generally increased. In the first quarter, my country's imported automatic data processing equipment parts, ships and marine engineering equipment increased by 95.6% and 52.5% respectively.
my country's consumer market has been stable and improving, which has also driven the increase in imports of consumer goods. The hot domestic consumer market during the Spring Festival also fully demonstrated the vitality and vitality of my country's consumption field. In the first quarter, the import of some people's livelihood commodities increased, such as the import value of edible oil increased by 12.1%, and the import volume of dried and fresh fruits increased by 8.3%.
my country is the world's largest manufacturing country and the second largest consumer market. It has a complete industrial category, a complete industrial system and strong supporting capabilities. At the same time, we have a population of more than 1.4 billion and more than 400 million middle-income groups. Various consumption scenarios are booming. Whether from industrial production or residents' consumption, the market demand is very large. In particular, my country has always insisted on expanding high-level opening up to the outside world, orderly expanding independent and unilateral opening up, actively expanding imports, and sharing development opportunities with countries around the world. We have maintained the position of the second largest importer in the world for 16 consecutive years, with an average annual growth rate of 5.4%, and the global import share has also steadily increased from 7.9% to 10.5%. At present and in the future, China's imports have huge room for growth, and the large Chinese market has always been a great opportunity for the world.
