A Chinese flag flies on a ship sailing past shipping containers unloaded at a dock of Tianjin Port Group Co. in Tianjin, China.
Nelson Ching | Bloomberg | Getty images
China reported March export data on Tuesday that missed analyst forecasts, while imports rose more than expected for the month.
Chinese exports rose 30.6% last month from a year ago in US dollars, lagging the 35.5% rise analysts had expected from Reuters. Meanwhile, the country’s imports in US dollars are up 38.1% year-on-year in March, more than the 23.3% rise analysts had predicted.
The stronger-than-expected surge in imports led China’s trade surplus to decline to $ 13.8 billion in March, much narrower than the Reuters poll forecast of $ 52.05 billion.
Paras Anand, Asia Pacific Chief Investment Officer at Fidelity International, said the latest data shows that China’s economic recovery is entering “another phase.”
He told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” after the release of the data that China’s recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic had focused on manufacturing in recent months, as shown by strong export numbers. But demand now seems to be increasing, he added.
“As we enter the recovery in China and reach a more mature level, we are starting to see consumption picking up very strongly as well,” Anand said.
China was the first country to report coronavirus cases in late 2019. Official data showed that the economy bottomed out in the first quarter of 2020, when the number of infections peaked.
The country seemed to have largely contained the outbreak, becoming the only major economy to record growth last year when it grew at 2.3%. China has set a growth target of more than 6% for 2021, while the International Monetary Fund expects the Asian giant to grow 8.4% this year.