According to statistics from the General Administration of Customs, my country’s total exports in March 2022 will increase by 14.7% year-on-year, which is better than market expectations. Imports turned negative year-on-year to -0.1%, which was lower than market expectations. The trade surplus was $47.38 billion in March.

Exports continued to slow. In terms of US dollars, my country’s export value in March 2022 increased by 14.7% year-on-year, slightly exceeding market expectations of 12.8%, but still 1.6 percentage points slower than the 16.3% in January-February. From the perspective of seasonal adjustment, the seasonal adjustment of exports in March was -2.1%, which was only better than the same period in 2011, 2015 and 2016 in history, and the seasonal adjustment has been negative for three consecutive months.

Domestic demand remains weak. In U.S. dollar terms, my country’s total imports in March 2022 turned negative year-on-year to -0.1%, the first time it has turned negative since August 2020, a sharp drop of 15.6 percentage points from January to February. From a seasonally adjusted month-on-month perspective, the seasonally adjusted month-on-month imports in March turned negative to -2.4%, which was only better than the same period in 2014 and 2019. The sharp decline in imports, on the one hand, may be related to the relatively high base last year, and on the other hand, it may be related to the repeated domestic epidemics since March.