Hong Kong (awp / afp) – China saw its exports collapse by 17.2% year-on-year over the two cumulative months of January-February, reflecting an economy paralyzed by the epidemic due to the new coronavirus, while its imports were slightly down.
This is the biggest drop in exports of the Asian giant since February 2019, in the middle of a trade war with the United States, according to figures published Saturday by the Chinese customs.
This dropout is more marked than the plunge of 16.2% expected by economists polled by the Bloomberg agency.
The holidays of the Lunar New Year, which fell on January 25, had been extended until February 10 to stem the epidemic, but the resumption of the activity remained then very fragmented, many factories struggling to restart their production.
The drastic measures maintained to contain the spread of the virus – between quarantines, confinement instructions and movement restrictions – complicate the return of workers and disrupt supply chains, while the transport of goods remains very disrupted.
For the same reasons, the country’s demand was strongly affected.
While many factories remained almost stationary in February and consumers caulked at home, Chinese imports fell 4% year on year in the first two months of the year, according to customs.
This decline is however much less pronounced than the fall of 16.1% expected by analysts polled by Bloomberg.
It is the first time that Customs has published aggregated data for January and February; no figures were delivered for the month of February alone.
These statistics confirm the dramatic magnitude of the economic impact of the epidemic. Recent purchasing managers’ (PMI) indices, which have fallen to levels never seen before, showed the collapse of activity in February, in both manufacturing and services.
Delays in ports
“The data show that Chinese factories have still not resumed production at full capacity,” warned Julian Evans-Pritchard, analyst at Capital Economics, on Friday.
In addition, “delays are getting longer in Chinese ports, causing an accumulation of ships awaiting unloading”, enough to penalize imports, he warned.
In the opinion of experts, however, the cumulative data for January and February blurs the picture.
Customs figures “do not fully reflect the magnitude of the recent weakening (in trade), as the disruptions were concentrated especially in February,” said Evans-Pritchard. According to him, “the recent plunge in trade has been much more pronounced than what the official figures suggest”.
Customs notably reported on Saturday an increase of about 5% over one year in Chinese crude oil imports for January-February, to 86.1 million tonnes … but the number reflects above all the traditional inflation Chinese shopping in January before New Year’s holidays.
And some experts warn of the increase, at peaks, of Chinese oil stocks while domestic consumption is not keeping pace.
The surplus with the United States is melting away
The Chinese authorities are stepping up measures to encourage the resumption of activity (loans to small businesses, tax rebates, regulatory easing, etc.), giving hope for a strong rebound in the short term.
But the epidemic is accelerating worldwide, threatening the economy of the Asian neighbors of China (Japan, South Korea), and especially in the European Union and the United States, the two main trading partners of the giant Asian.
Certainly, “Chinese trade could return to normal gradually by the end of March or the beginning of the second quarter,” said Ning Zhang, economist at UBS bank cited by Bloomberg.
But “the headwinds come from an all-out expansion of the coronavirus on a planetary scale or from a pandemic which would last several quarters, which would lead to global demand and Chinese exports,” he insists.
In the immediate future, the epidemic could jeopardize the implementation of a Sino-US partial trade agreement signed in January, under which China agreed to buy $ 200 billion in additional US goods.
Logically, China’s trade surplus with the United States shrank 40% year-on-year for January-February cumulative, falling to $ 25.4 billion according to customs, due to the collapse of exports from the country.
This surplus arouses the wrath of the Trump administration and is at the heart of the trade war of the two powers.
afp / rp
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