A Chinese flag flies over a ship passing by sea containers unloading at a dock of Tianjin Port Group Co. in Tianjin, China.
Nelson Ching | Bloomberg | Getty Images
On Tuesday, China reported March export data that had no analyst forecasts, while imports for the month rose more than expected.
Chinese exports rose 30.6% last month from a year ago in terms of US dollars, falling behind the 35.5% expected by analysts surveyed by Reuters. Meanwhile, the country’s imports in US dollars increased by 38.1% in March compared to last year, exceeding the 23.3% increase that analysts had forecast.
The larger-than-expected increase in imports caused China’s trade surplus to shrink to $ 13.8 billion in March, much narrower than the Reuters survey forecast of $ 52.5 billion.
Paras Anand, Fidelity International’s chief investment officer for Asia and the Pacific, said the latest figures show that China’s economic recovery is entering a “different phase.”
He told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” after the release of data that, in recent months, China’s recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic had focused on production, as seen in the export figures. But demand seems to be rising now, he added.
“As we move towards recovery in China at a more mature level, we are starting to see that consumption is also rising very sharply,” Anand said.
China was the first country to report coronavirus cases in late 2019. Official data showed that the economy reached its peak in the first quarter of 2020, when the number of infections peaked.
The country appears to have largely contained the outbreak and became the only major economy to grow last year when it expanded by 2.3%. China has set a growth target of more than 6% for 2021, while the International Monetary Fund expects the Asian giant to expand by 8.4% this year.