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External trade statistics by country and commodity

The Census and Statistics Department today (Monday) released detailed statistics on external trade with breakdown by country/territory and commodity for September 1996.

In September 1996, the value of re-exports grew by 2.2% over a year carlier to $107.8 billion, while the value of domestic exports decreased by 14% to $18.3 billion. Meanwhile, imports decreased marginally by 0.2% to $130.7 billion.

Changes in the value of Hong Kong's re-exports to 10 main destinations are shown in Table 1.

Comparing September 1996 with September 1995, increases were recorded in the value of re-exports to the Netherlands (+20%), the United Kingdom (+16%), the United States (+11%), Singapore (+9.2%) and South Korea (+0.7%).

However, decreases were recorded in the value of re-exports to Taiwan (- 5.2%), France (-1.9%), Japan (-1.7%), Germany (-0.3%) and China (-0.2%).

Comparing the first nine months of 1996 with the same period in 1995, the value of re-exports to most main destinations showed increases of various magnitudes: Japan (+19%), the United Kingdom (+14%), the Netherlands (+10%), France (+10%), China (+7.7%), Germany (+6.9%), Singapore (+6.1%), South Korea (+5.8%) and the United States (+3.8%).

However, the value of re-exports to Taiwan decreased by 4.8%.

Taking all destinations together, the value of re-exports in the first nine months of 1996 was $876.5 billion, 6.7% higher than that in the same period in 1995.

Table 2 shows changes in the value of re-exports of 10 principal commodity

divisions.

Comparing the first nine months of 1996 with the same period in 1995, the value of re-exports of most principal commodity divisions rose. More notable increases were registered for office machines and automatic data processing machines (by $9.2 billion or 23%); clothing (by $7.5 billion or 11%); miscellaneous manufactured articles consisting mainly of baby carriages, toys, games and sporting goods (by $7.3 billion or 6.9%); electrical machinery, apparatus and appliances, and electrical parts thereof (by $6.3 billion or 7.5%); photographic apparatus, equipment and supplies, optical goods, watches and clocks (by $4.4 billion or 12%); footwear (by $4.3 billion or 9.5%); and general industrial machinery and equipment, and machine parts (by $1.8 billion or 8.3%).

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