XN000022-1996-03-14 — Page 11

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Hong Kong's external trade statistics for January

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

The value of re-exports increased by 22% over a year earlier to $101.2 billion in January 1996.

Comparing January 1996 with January 1995, the value of re-exports to most of the main destinations showed increases of various magnitudes: China (+43%), Japan (+35%), Taiwan (+21%), France (+19%), Singapore (+19%), the United Kingdom (+17%), the Netherlands (+14%), Germany (+14%) and South Korea (+11%).

However, the value of re-exports to the United States decreased by 2.8%.

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

As the external trade figures for a single month at the beginning of each year tend to be fluctuating due to effects of the Lunar Near Year holidays, it is more meaningful to make comparisons over a longer period.

Comparing the three months ending January 1996 with the three months ending January 1995, the value of re-exports to most main destinations showed increases of various magnitudes : Japan (+30%), China (+25%), France (+21%), the Netherlands (+20%), the United Kingdom (+19%), South Korea (+16%), Singapore (+16%), Taiwan (+15%) and Germany (+12%).

0.9%.

However, the value of re-exports to the United States decreased marginally by

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

divisions.

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