China's exports up 0.9% in April

BEIJING, May 8 -- China's exports went up 0.9 percent year on year to 188.54 billion U.S. dollars in April, customs data showed on Thursday.

Imports were up 0.8 percent to 170.09 billion U.S. dollars and total foreign trade volume increased 0.8 percent to 358.63 billion U.S. dollars, the General Administration of Customs (GAC) said.

Trade balance realized a surplus of 18.45 billion U.S. dollars in April, up 1.8 percent year on year, the GAC said.

However, yuan-denominated customs data offered a different picture, showing that April exports dropped 1.4 percent to 1.16 trillion yuan and imports lost 1.3 percent to 1.04 trillion yuan.

GAC spokesman Zheng Yuesheng explained that the yuan-dollar conversion is based on an exchange rate released by the country's forex regulator to serve statistical purposes, with monthly changes leading to different results in the two currencies.

He said over 80 percent of the customs declarations were U.S. dollar-denominated and converted into Chinese yuan using the spot exchange rate when calculating taxes. The disparity between the two versions represents appreciation of the yuan last month.

Thursday's GAC data also revealed that the first four months saw a year-on-year decline of 0.5 percent in the foreign trade volume to 1.32 trillion U.S. dollars, according to the GAC data.

Exports decreased 2.3 percent and imports went up 1.4 percent during the period, while the trade surplus stood at 35.24 billion U.S. dollars, down 41.4 percent from a year ago, the GAC said.

China set a trade growth target of 7.5 percent this year, lower than the 8-percent goal for 2013 and last year's actual expansion of 7.6 percent.