XN000022-1997-04-14 — Page 11

HK's external trade statistics with breakdown for Feb 1997

The Census and Statistics Department today (Monday) released detailed statistics on external trade with breakdown by country/territory and commodity for February 1997.

In February 1997, the value of re-exports grew by 0.3% over a year earlier to $76.5 billion, while the value of domestic exports decreased by 11% to $12.6 billion. Meanwhile, imports increased by 6.6% to $102.3 billion.

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

Comparing February 1997 with February 1996, increases were recorded in the value of re-exports to South Korea (+12%), China (+12%), the Netherlands (+7.8%) and Taiwan (+7.6%).

On the other hand, there was basically no change in the value of re-exports to the United States, and decreases were recorded in the value of re-exports to Japan (- 12%), Germany (-11%), France (-8.7%), the United Kingdom (-6.0%) and Singapore (-4.3%).

Comparing the first two months of 1997 with the same period in 1996, increases were recorded in the value of re-exports to the Netherlands (+8.6%), South Korea (+6.2%), the United States (+6.2%), Taiwan (+5.7%), China (+3.3%) and Singapore (+2.2%).

However, decreases were recorded in the value of re-exports to Germany (- 9.6%), France (-3.6%), Japan (-3.6%) and the United Kingdom (-2.2%).

Taking all destinations together, the value of re-exports in the first two months of 1997, at $178.6 billion, increased slightly by 0.6% over the same period in 1996.

Table 2 shows changes in the value of re-exports of ten principal commodity divisions.

Comparing the first two months of 1997 with the same period in 1996, more notable increases in the value of re-exports were registered for office machines and automatic data processing machines (by $2.8 billion or 28%); clothing (by $609 million or 3.7%); and electrical machinery, apparatus and appliances, and electrical parts thereof (by $604 million or 3.2%).