According to customs' statistics, in the first three quarters of this year, Chongqing's foreign import and export trading reached 451.44 billion yuan ($ 73.75 billion), an increase of 52.9 percent over last year.

During the same period, foreign imports and exports in Liangjiang New Area reached 258.58 billion yuan, an increase of 110 percent, accounting for 57.3 percent of the city's total foreign trade. Specifically, exports were 148.32 billion yuan, an increase of 80.6 percent and imports were 110.26 billion yuan, an increase of 1.6 times.

In the first three quarters of this year, Liangjiang’s imports and exports for general trades were 65.43 billion yuan, an increase of 15.3 percent, accounting for 25.3 percent of the total turnover. During the same period, imports and exports for the processing trade reached 166.43 billion yuan, an increase of 2.4 times, accounting for 64.4 percent of total imports and exports.

During the first three quarters of this year, Liangjiang’s private enterprises’ turnover reached 156.66 billion yuan, an increase of 1.7 times, accounting for 60.6 percent of total imports and exports. During the same period, foreign-invested enterprises’ imports and exports were 69.46 billion yuan, an increase of 39 percent, accounting for 26.9 percent of the total imports and exports.

Imports and exports to Hong Kong, ASEAN, South Korea, and Myanmar grew rapidly. In the first three quarters of this year, Liangjiang’s imports and exports to Hong Kong and ASEAN were 65.29 billion yuan, and 53.71 billion yuan, up by 2.9 times, and 1.5 times respectively. Imports and exports to the EU were 34.97 billion yuan, an increase of 6.6 percent. In addition, Imports and exports to South Korea were 31.14 billion yuan, an increase of 10.8 times; imports and exports to Myanmar were 22.05 billion yuan, an increase of 17.2 times; imports and exports to the United States were 21.81 billion, an increase of 58.8 percent.

Precious metal jewelry overtook laptops to become the largest export commodity for the first time. During the first three quarters of this year, precious metal jewelry exports from Liangjiang were 51.63 billion yuan, an increase of 36 times, laptop exports were 45.8 billion yuan, an increase of 41.4 percent; clothing exports were 4.92 billion yuan, an increase of 1.2 times. Integrated circuits (IC), auto accessories and other major commodity imports showed a good momentum of growth.

During the first three quarters of this year, imports of ICs reached 13.15 billion yuan, up 28.4 percent; imports of auto accessories were 8.35 billion yuan, an increase of 47.5 percent; and imports of automatic data processing equipment were 5.53 billion yuan, an increase of 46.1 percent.

By Huang Pei

Edited by Brian Salter