China to see better trade environment in 2014

BEIJING, (Xinhua) — China will see a better trade environment next year partly due to rising external demand, as economic recovery in some developed nations may accelerate, the People’s Daily reported Monday.

“The trade environment will continue to improve as the government’s policies to promote trade growth show further effects and some developed nations see recovering economies,” the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party of China said in a report.

The contribution of foreign trade to the country’s GDP growth will likely rise to 0.1 percentage point in 2014, up from minus 0.1 percentage point for the first three quarters of this year, Fan Jianping, chief economist at the State Information Center, was cited as saying.

The Ministry of Commerce forecast on Friday that China’s foreign trade is likely to grow by more than 7 percent from the previous year to reach 4.14 trillion U.S. dollars in 2013, slightly lower than the official target of 8 percent.

In late July, the government rolled out a raft of measures to stabilize trade growth to help trade companies that were confronting weak external demand and rising costs.

However, external demand will gradually pick up next year, as many institutions predict global economic recovery will accelerate in 2014.

In a report earlier this month, Citigroup forecast that global real GDP growth will rise from 2.4 percent in 2013 to about 3.1 percent in 2014, with growth in advanced economies up from 1.1 percent this year to about 2 percent in 2014.