Five Measures of the Ministry of Commerce on Export Protection

The Ministry of Commerce proposed five measures, including "increasing the support of fiscal, tax and financial policies, vigorously exploring emerging markets, optimizing the structure of export commodities, vigorously developing service trade, and actively expanding imports", to maintain the steady growth of imports and exports next year, and accelerate the transformation of foreign trade development mode. At the 2009 National Business Conference held on December 23, the Ministry of Commerce proposed five measures, including "increasing financial policy support, vigorously exploring emerging markets, optimizing the structure of export commodities, vigorously developing service trade, and actively expanding imports", to maintain the steady growth of imports and exports next year and accelerate the transformation of the development mode of foreign trade. Chen Deming, Minister of Commerce, pointed out at the meeting that enterprises should be actively guided to fully understand the role of emerging markets, not afraid of small orders, small profits and hardships, and vigorously expand the export markets of emerging economies and developing countries in South Asia, the Middle East, Central Asia, South America and Eastern Europe.
According to the statistics of the Ministry of Commerce, China's exports to some emerging market countries are still growing rapidly this year, which has become a rare highlight in this year's export trade, while the demand in European and American markets is weak. At the same time, the callback of export tax rebate rate of some products also stimulated the growth of related product exports. Chen Deming predicted that China's total import and export volume in 2008 would exceed 2.5 trillion US dollars.
In addition to maintaining the steady growth of foreign trade, another focus of enterprise work next year is to expand domestic consumption demand. Chen Deming said that under the severe situation at home and abroad, "it is not easy to complete these tasks".
Increase fiscal, tax and financial policy support
In terms of increasing fiscal, tax and financial policy support, Chen Deming pointed out at the meeting that the government should implement the policy of increasing the export tax rebate rate of some products, steadily promote the transformation and upgrading of processing trade, support the development of key processing trade receiving areas in the central and western regions, and promote the gradient transfer of processing trade. At the same time, coordinate the financial sector to improve the export financial environment, increase credit support to enterprises, improve the financing guarantee conditions for enterprises, and improve the export credit risk guarantee mechanism. The Ministry of Commerce's survey of 992 enterprises at the 104th Canton Fair this year shows that 27.1% of the enterprises report that bad export debts are increasing, 60% of the enterprises report that orders are shrinking, and 62% of the enterprises report that the number of unit orders is decreasing.
In November, the national export data showed a negative year-on-year growth of 2.2%, the first decline in a normal month in nearly 10 years; In November, imports fell 17.9%. At the same time, export bad debts began to increase. From January to October this year, China Export and Credit Insurance Corporation paid a total of 150 million dollars in claims to enterprises, up 174% year on year.
In this regard, Fu Ziying, Vice Minister of Commerce, pointed out at the 7th Annual Conference of Chinese Import and Export Enterprises held on December 20 that the impact of the financial crisis on the global economy was far greater than that during the 1996-2001 downturn in world trade, when global trade was still growing. Therefore, "China's foreign trade will face enormous difficulties and tests in all aspects next year."
Fu Ziying proposed to improve the foreign trade promotion mechanism in line with international standards. In the fields of finance and taxation, finance, customs clearance, commodity inspection, logistics, information services, intermediary services, government public services, etc., improve the import and export trade promotion system that is in line with international standards.
Vigorously explore emerging markets
In terms of developing emerging markets, Chen Deming pointed out that "while making efforts to consolidate traditional markets such as the United States, Europe and Japan, we should accelerate the implementation of market diversification strategies and guide enterprises to vigorously develop the export markets of emerging economies and developing countries in South Asia, the Middle East, Central Asia, South America and Eastern Europe".
To this end, the Ministry of Commerce has a lot of work to do in the new year. This includes: overseas business institutions widely understand and collect the market information of the host country, and timely provide good services for enterprises to explore emerging markets. Guide enterprises to make good use of existing regional and subregional cooperation mechanisms and expand trade with emerging market countries in the region. Encourage and support enterprises to participate in emerging market exhibitions and carry out trademark registration and quality certification. Investors from emerging markets should also be widely invited to participate in various domestic exhibitions.
Although China's exports to the United States and other developed countries have shown negative growth this year, China's exports to emerging market countries are still growing rapidly. From January to October this year, China's exports to Latin American countries grew by 47%, to African countries by 41%, to Middle East countries by 31%, and to India by 39%.
In addition, in terms of creating an external environment, Chen Deming proposed that we should make full use of high-level mutual visits and dialogue mechanisms, properly handle economic and trade relations with the United States, Europe, Japan and other major countries, deepen economic and trade cooperation with emerging markets and developing countries such as Russia, Brazil, India, and strengthen economic and trade exchanges with neighboring countries.
The Ministry of Commerce regards improving the level of border opening as an important breakthrough to further improve China's open economy. It combines border opening, overseas resource development, regional economic cooperation and undertaking domestic and foreign industrial transfer. With key port cities as the carrier, it realizes mutually beneficial cooperation and common development with neighboring countries by building a number of border trade centers, border export processing zones, import resource processing zones and cross-border economic cooperation zones. In terms of optimizing the structure of export commodities, the Ministry of Commerce, together with relevant departments, will focus on promoting the export of self owned brand products, large machinery, complete sets of equipment, advantageous agricultural products (market forum) and labor-intensive products, and increase support for small and medium-sized enterprises' technological innovation and participation in international competition; Improve the export control policy of "two high and one gold" products; Improve the product level of processing trade industry and extend the industrial chain of processing trade; Improve the whole process supervision system of export product quality.