Foreign trade misses target

China's foreign trade in 2012 rose 6.2 percent from a year earlier, missing its annual growth target of 10 percent, the country's customs bureau said Thursday, noting that this trade performance will improve in 2013.

Exports rose 7.9 percent in 2012 from the previous year while imports increased 4.3 percent year on year, data released by the General Administration of Customs of China (GACC) showed Thursday.　

The figure brought the trade surplus in 2012 to $231.1 billion, up 48.1 percent from the level in 2012.　

"The trade result was hard-won given the deepening of the eurozone debt crisis, slow recovery in the world economy, weak demands in the global market and big downward pressure on the domestic economy in 2012," Zheng Yuesheng, spokesman of the GACC, said at a press conference in Beijing.

Despite uncertainties, the country's trade will be slightly better in 2013 than in 2012, Zheng said.

"Many people are too pessimistic about China's external trade. It actually did not perform as badly as it seems. The surplus of $231.1 billion in 2012 showed a positive contribution by trade to GDP growth rather than a drag on the economy," Jin Baisong, deputy director of the Department of China's Foreign Trade Studies at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, told the Global Times.

"China's trade still remains quite competitive compared with that of other economies in the world," Jin said.

In the first three quarters of 2012, China's exports grew faster than those of other major economies, with its share in global trade rising to 11.1 percent, up 0.6 percentage points from 2011, data released by the Ministry of Commerce in late December showed.　

Analysts said as Chinese policymakers have been carefully steering the economy away from reliance on exports to focus on boosting domestic demand, imports are expected to surge in 2013.

"The country's new leadership is committed to promoting urbanization and turning it into a main driver of economic growth. Imports are expected to expand sharply in 2013 as construction of government-subsidized housing, railways and water conservancy projects are sped up," Chen Hufei, a researcher with the Bank of Communications, said in a research note sent to the Global Times Thursday.

"We believe both export and import growth have truly bottomed out from lows in mid-2012, but we remain cautious over export growth on uncertainties and weakness in the US, eurozone and Japan," Lu Ting, a China economist with the Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said.

A breakdown by region showed that trade volume with Europe, China's biggest trade partner, dropped 3.7 percent year on year in 2012, while trade with the US, which overtook Europe to be the biggest destination of China's exports, rose 8.5 percent year on year.

Japan was downgraded to be China's fifth largest trade partner in 2012 from the fourth in 2011. Trade between the two shrunk 3.9 percent in 2012 from the previous year amid a row after Japan's "nationalization" of the Diaoyu Islands.　

Thursday's customs data also showed exports surged 14.1 percent in December from a year earlier, the strongest growth in seven months and more than quadruple November's 2.9 percent pace. Imports increased 6 percent year on year in December after flattening in November, the fastest pace in six months.

The surprisingly large rebound in the country's exports and imports in December added to evidence that the pick-up in the country's economy is gathering momentum.

"We continue to expect China's GDP growth in the fourth quarter of 2012 to have rebounded to 7.9 percent year on year," Dariusz Kowalczyk, a senior economist at Hong Kong-based Crédit Agricole CIB, said in a research note sent to the Global Times Thursday, noting a recovery in domestic demand was seen via the increase in imports growth in December.

Read more: Foreign trade growth slows in 2012