Taicang foreign trade volume hits all-time high

Taicang, a county-level city within Suzhou, Jiangsu province, saw a record high in foreign trade in 2018, statistics from Taicang Customs show.

The foreign trade volume of the city jumped 9.4 percent year-on-year to 96 billion yuan ($13.91 billion) last year with second largest increase among Suzhou's nine districts and county-level cities.

Taicang's export volume surged 7.6 percent year-on-year to 44.38 billion yuan while import volume stood at 51.73 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11.1 percent.

A spokesman for Taicang Customs said that stability and upgrading are the two very words to summarize Taicang's foreign trade performance in 2018.

Thanks to foreign-invested and private companies, Taicang's trade with historical partners, including members of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and European Union (EU) as well as Japan, maintained solid growth.

The foreign trade volume of foreign-invested companies in Taicang amounted to 67.48 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.9 percent, taking up 70.2 percent of the city's total foreign trade volume.

The private companies' foreign trade volume in the city soared 15.1 percent year-on-year to 25.59 billion yuan.

A growing number of high-value-added and hi-tech products were traded between Taicang and foreign countries in 2018.

The export volume of mechanical and electrical products hit 26.97 million yuan, an uptick of 7.5 percent year-on-year and the import volume rose by 16.4 percent to 15.67 percent.