Provinces cut trade growth targets

Local governments have cut their trade growth targets this year amid uncertainties in external demand, but this gives leeway for economic restructuring, analysts said Wednesday.

Major exporters in regions such as South China's Guangdong Province and East China's Jiangsu, Shandong and Fujian provinces have cut their trade growth targets during ongoing local legislative sessions.

"A moderate trade growth target would give local governments more room for industrial restructuring and upgrading," said Yu Fugong, director of the Research Department of Economics at the Party School of the CPC Guangdong Provincial Committee.

Guangdong, whose trade accounted for 25 percent of the country's total trade in 2012, cut its trade growth target to 5 percent in 2013 from 7.5 percent in 2012, official data released last week showed.

"Cutting its trade growth target is in line with other major economic targets set by Guangdong Province," Yu said.

Guangdong also aims to achieve economic growth of 8 percent in 2013, down from the 8.5 percent target in 2012, Zhu

Xiaodan, governor of the province, said Friday.

Jiangsu and Fujian have also lowered their trade growth goals to 5 percent in 2013, down from 8 percent and 10 percent, respectively, in 2012.

Shandong downgraded its trade growth target to 8 percent in 2013 from 10 percent of the previous year. Zhejiang, another major exporter, is yet to announce its trade target.

Guangdong was the only province among the five major exporters that achieved its trade target last year.

Trade in Guangdong grew 7.7 percent year-on-year in 2012, exceeding the target of 7.5 percent.

The five provinces accounted for 58 percent of the country's total trade in 2012.

"The country's fast trade growth, at an annual average of 20 percent in the past decade, is over," said Jin Baisong, deputy director of the Department of China's Foreign Trade Studies at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation.

China's foreign trade in 2012 rose by 6.2 percent from a year earlier, missing its annual growth target of 10 percent,

The trade situation in 2013 is still difficult and the country's target in 2013 is "to try to keep foreign trade growing at roughly the same level as GDP growth," Shen Danyang, spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce, said earlier this month.

China's GDP growth slowed to 7.8 percent year-on-year in 2012 and many economists and research institutes have forecast that growth in 2013 will be around 7.5 percent.

"Downgrading the trade growth targets by major exporters in the country is not necessarily a bad development. It gives China more drive and pressure to move away from its reliance on trade and toward domestic consumption for economic growth," Jin said.