Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, October 30, 2003
China expects to see trade deficit in near future: official
China's trade surplus in the country's balance of payments (BOP) is getting smaller and smaller,and a possible trade deficit will appear soon, a senior Chinese official says.
China's trade surplus in the country's balance of payments (BOP) is getting smaller and smaller,and a possible trade deficit will appear soon, a senior Chinese official says.
Guo Shuqing, director of China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), made the prediction at an international financial forum here Wednesday.
Guo said China's BOP surplus is coming increasingly from the country's capital account instead of the current account.
The latest SAFE official statistics showed that China's trade surplus reached more than 30 billion US dollars last year and in the first three quarters this year only amounted to 8.8 billion USdollars, a slump of 55.6 percent on the same period last year.
A trade deficit occurred in some months of the first quarter ofthis year, Guo added.
The possible trade deficit might be a good thing for China, Guosaid, explaining that if the amount of foreign investment could besecured, the trade deficit would be conducive to the allocation ofresources as well as better exploitation of domestic and international markets for China.
Guo said the huge BOP surplus is not a goal that the Chinese government had particularly pursued, stressing that it was a jointresult of complicated domestic and international factors.