AN investigation is needed to find out why the port and foreign trade figures do not match, says Ministry of Commerce researcher Li Jian.
Experts: China's Q1 trade statistics show signs of falsification
AN investigation is needed to find out why the port and foreign trade figures do not match, says Ministry of Commerce researcher Li Jian, who has been joined by other experts who say China's trade statistics are too be good to be true.
The Ministry of Commerce has started an inquiry into abnormal trade figures, reported Xinhua, allegedly the result of shifting the same goods repeatedly back and forth between Hong Kong and the mainland to enhance Chinese trade figures.
This news comes after the China Securities Journal and the Wall Street Journal have published stories suggesting China's trade figures have been falsified after provincial governments put pressure on municipal authorities to come up with better numbers.
Mr Li noted that China's foreign trade value increased 13.4 per cent year on year to CNY6.12 trillion (US$946.67 billion) in the first quarter. Export value also recorded a strong growth of 18.4 per cent to CNY3.2 trillion. But port figures did not do as well with foreign trade cargo throughput that rose only 9.1 per cent to 804 million tonnes, 4.2 per cent slower year on year.
Mr Li is not satisfied by the explanation provided by China Customs over the wide gap between mainland's figures of exports to Hong Kong and Hong Kong's own statistics. The underlying reasons are still to be discovered, he said.
Joining in his suspicions is Cao Zhongxi, consultant for China Ports and Harbours Association, who said that port and foreign trade figures usually match each other. So the situation in the first quarter needs thorough study, he said.
Wang Qianjin, an analyst from China's biggest textile industry website www.webtex.cn , said that port figures are hard to falsify. So the gloomy port figures in the first quarter have truly reflected the depression in the export business. High trade figures might result from repeated export and import of one single exporter's goods to Hong Kong.
Mr Wang said, for the garment and textile industry, performance is expected to be better this year than the last. But a growth of 20 per cent like the figures show will be difficult to meet any time of the year. He said the trade figures might be falsified.
However, some industry insiders said that it is common that exporters quote a low price for their imported materials for processing and a high price for exported products in order to get higher tax rebate