China yesterday said its exports soared for the third straight month last month and at their fastest pace in three years, which analysts said could leave Beijing more open to a stronger yuan.
Overseas shipments grew 45.7 percent year-on-year last month to US$94.5 billion, the customs bureau said, cementing a turnaround that began in December when a year-long decline ended.
China’s export data is closely watched for clues to the state of the world’s third-largest economy and for signs of recovery in crisis-hit markets such as the US and Europe.
Bank of America-Merrill Lynch economists said they expected the recovery to continue, while a change in the currency regime could come as soon as “after mid-2010.”
“With such high export growth, pressure on China’s peg to the greenback could be escalated rapidly in months ahead, and we expect by the middle of this year China could shift the current dollar peg to a new regime,” they said.
China’s central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan (周小川) said last weekend that the policy of keeping the currency stable against the US dollar was temporary and would be removed “sooner or later” once the global recovery was on a firmer footing.
“The recovery seems to have gained legs and this will give China’s government more confidence to start revaluing the yuan,” said Ren Xianfang, an economist at IHS Global Insight in Beijing.
Analysts said that the latest figures reflected improving demand for Chinese-made products, even though the growth was inflated by the comparison with February last year, when shipments plunged 25.7 percent due to the global crisis.
“It’s obviously impacted by the low base effect but there were five fewer [business] days in February this year than last year, which makes this number pretty impressive,” Royal Bank of Canada senior strategist Brian Jackson told reporters.
The Lunar New Year, China’s most important holiday and a time when many companies shut down, came in February this year. Last year, it came in late January.
February’s exports grew at the quickest pace since the same month in 2007.
China’s trade surplus reached US$7.61 billion in February, the new figures showed, up 57.2 percent year-on-year, while imports rose 44.7 percent year-on-year to US$86.9 billion.
The data marked a continuation of a turnaround in December, when exports grew 17.7 percent, snapping a string of 13 straight declines. That was followed by a 21 percent year-on-year increase in January.
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