China's Foreign Trade: Service sector deficit falls in first half of 2019

World
Europe

The Commerce Ministry has new figures regarding China's trade in services. The total value for this area of activity climbed to 2.6 trillion yuan in the first half of this year. And the country is seeing its exports of service-related offerings rising, narrowing its services trade deficit. CGTN's Wang Hui has the details.

The Ministry of Commerce says China's service trade grew to over 2.6 trillion yuan, in the January to June period. That's up 2.6 percent year-on-year. Data shows service exports rose 9 percent to 933 billion yuan, while imports went down by 0.6%, to 1.7 trillion yuan. That led to a decrease of 10.5% in the service trade deficit, to 746 billion yuan.

ZHU GUANGYAO, SENIOR OFFICIAL CHINESE MINISTRY OF COMMERCE "Service trade exports continued the trend of growing faster than imports. The growth rate of exports was 9.6 percentage points higher than imports. That helped the trade deficit of trade in services fall by nearly 88 billion yuan."

Zhu says the service trade's proportion of overall foreign trade grew by 0.5%, to take up 15% of the total.

Knowledge-industry services also performed well. Total trade volume was 892 billion yuan, up 9.4%. Exports came to 467-billion yuan, up 12%, while imports rose 6.5% to 425 billion.

ZHU GUANGYAO, SENIOR OFFICIAL CHINESE MINISTRY OF COMMERCE "The knowledge-industry grew to account for more than one-third of the entire service trade, up 2.2%. It went up by 9.4% -- that was 6.8 points higher than the growth rate of China's service trade in general."

WANG HUI BEIJING "Some knowledge-industry fields saw rapid growth in the first half of this year. Growth in exports based on intellectual property exceeded 30%, compared to the same period last year. Imports and exports climbed for telecommunications, computer sciences, information services and financial services. Wang Hui, CGTN, Beijing."