China's trade surplus expected to narrow
(AP)
Updated: 2006-02-14 07:21

China's trade surplus is expected to narrow this year from last year's record US$101.88 billion, partly because of the appreciation of the yuan, the Shanghai Securities News Monday cited a senior statistician as saying.

The yuan's gradual rise since last year will have a lag effect on China's trade surplus in 2006, making it difficult to match last year's level, National Bureau of Statistics spokesman Zheng Jingping said in an article carried in the paper.

China revalued the yuan by 2.1 percent against the dollar in July, and eliminated the effective peg to the dollar by referencing the local unit to a basket of currencies.

However, Zheng said China's trade surplus wouldn't fall significantly as the country's exports will continue to grow rapidly in 2006 because the world economy is expected to have stable growth. He cited a forecast by the International Monetary Fund that the global economy is likely to rise by 4.3 percent this year, unchanged from last year.

Zheng didn't give his estimates for exports and the trade surplus this year.

China's trade surplus in January was US$9.49 billion (euro7.98 billion), down from $11 billion (euro9.25 billion) in December, but up from $6.49 billion (euro5.46 billion) in January 2005, data released by the Ministry of Commerce Monday showed.

China's exports rose 28.1 percent from a year earlier to $64.99 billion (euro54.67 billion) last month, faster than an expected 22.1 percent gain and December's 18.2 percent growth.

Zheng also predicted the national economy will grow "a bit slower" in 2006 than the 9.9 percent growth in 2005, which was also slightly slower than 2004's revised growth rate of 10.1 percent. But Zheng told Dow Jones Newswires he had yet to come up with a specific prediction on China's economic growth for this year.