(Bloomberg) -- China’s exports surged in the first two months of the year, with figures skewed by the low base in 2020 when the economy was in lockdown.
- Exports jumped 60.6% in dollar terms in the January-February period from a year earlier, data from the customs administration showed Sunday, well above the 40% median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists. In the same period last year, exports had plunged 17.4%
- Imports climbed 22.2% in the first two months of the year from a year ago, compared with a 16% gain predicted in the survey. The trade surplus reached $103.25 billion in the period
Key Insights
- The first two months are normally volatile for China’s economic activity because of the week-long Lunar New Year holiday. This year’s figures are even more distorted compared with 2020, when factories and businesses were shut to contain the coronavirus outbreak
- Even so, exports have boomed in recent months because of surging global demand for medical equipment and work-from-home devices. That’s helped to underpin China’s V-shaped recovery from the pandemic, with its economy the only major one to expand in 2020
- China’s customs administration started releasing combined data for the first two months of the year in 2020, aligning with the National Bureau of Statistics’s practice, due to disruptions caused by the Lunar Year Year
©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
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