Chinese export growth in April disappoints

Chinese exports staged a disappointing recovery in April but some economists remained optimistic regarding the outlook for Chinese trade.

In seasonally adjusted terms the country’s sales overseas jumped by 18.6% month-on-month.

That saw the year-on-year rate of decline in exports in US dollar terms ease to -6.4% after a reading of -15% in the month before.

However, the consensus forecast had been for an increase of 5%.

Julian Evans Pritchard at Capital Economics expressed surprise at the results given that the dampening effect of the Lunar New Year holidays should have fully washed out in March.

Import growth also missed forecasts, dropping by 16.2% year-on-year in April versus the -12.7% seen in the month before (consensus: -12%).

However, the reading for April marked a small improvement on the 17.6% drop seen in the first quarter.

Overall, the country’s trade surplus rebounded to $34.1bn from $3.1bn in March.