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External trade statistics for November 1996
In November 1996, the value of re-exports grew by 7% over a year earlier to $100.4 billion, while the value of domestic exports decreased by 4,4% to $18 billion. Meanwhile, imports increased by 4.9% to $131.1 billion.
The Census and Statistics Department today (Monday) released detailed statistics on external trade with breakdown by country/territory and commodity for November 1996.
Changes in the value of Hong Kong's re-exports to 10 main destinations are shown in Table 1.
Comparing November 1996 with November 1995, increases were recorded in the value of re-exports to China (+13%), Singapore (+12%), the United States (+11%), France (+8.9%), Japan (+3.2%), the United Kingdom (+1%) and the Netherlands (+1%).
However, decreases were recorded in the value of re-exports to South Korea (- 7.1%), Germany (-3.8%) and Taiwan (-0.2%).
Comparing the first 11 months of 1996 with the same period in 1995, the value of re-exports to most main destinations showed increases of various magnitudes: Japan (+16%), the United Kingdom (+12%), the Netherlands (+9.9%), China (+8.7%), France (+8.7%), Singapore (+7.9%), South Korea (+5.2%), Germany (+5.1%) and the United States (+4.5%).
However, the value of re-exports to Taiwan decreased by 4.3%.
Taking all destinations together, the value of re-exports in the first 11 months of 1996 was $1,087.3 billion, 6.9% 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 11 months of 1996 with the same period in 1995, more notable increases in the value of re-exports were registered for office machines and automatic data processing machines (by $12.1 billion or 24%); clothing (by $9.1 billion or 11%); electrical machinery, apparatus and appliances, and electrical parts thereof (by $8.8 billion or 8.5%); miscellaneous manufactured articles consisting mainly of baby carriages, toys, games and sporting goods (by $7 billion or 5.3%); photographic apparatus, equipment and supplies, optical goods, watches and clocks (by $5 billion or 11%); and footwear (by $5 billion or 9.1%).
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