Trade: Burdens of enterprises to be eased

China will step up efforts to stabilize foreign trade performance while improving the trade structure through a raft of policy measures, government officials said at a news conference on Sunday.

Experts said the country is expected to further vitalize enterprises in the foreign trade sector while forging stronger trade cooperation with developed as well as emerging economies, amid negative factors including rising protectionism and weakening global demand.

Such endeavors will expand and upgrade China's trade and also will be conducive to global economic recovery, they said.

Wang Shouwen, vice-minister of commerce and China's international trade representative, told the news conference that domestic enterprises involved in foreign trade are challenged by increases in trade risks, pressure to enhance profitability and inconveniences in participating in foreign trade fairs, though uncertainties in external demand remain the biggest issue.

"We will try hard to create more trade opportunities," he said, adding that, to that end, the country will widely resume offline trade fairs, improve the efficiency of processing APEC business travel card applications, and facilitate the orderly resumption of international passenger flights.

Wang said the country will stabilize foreign trade in key products such as automobiles, ensure development of foreign-trade enterprises, and enhance the formats and environment for foreign trade.

Key measures will include helping automakers to establish and improve their global marketing and service networks, ensuring funding for large-scale equipment projects, and accelerating the revision of the catalog of encouraged technologies and products for import.

They also will include encouraging banks to better meet financing demand from small and medium-sized foreign-trade enterprises, guiding companies that are engaged in trade processing to move to central, western and northeastern regions of the nation, and supporting the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area in developing digital trade.

Wu Haiping, director-general of the General Administration of Customs' department of general operations, said that in order to address the difficulties and bottlenecks faced by foreign-trade enterprises, the customs authority will focus on improving trade facilitation, streamlining import and export logistics, optimizing the business environment at ports, reducing enterprises' cost burdens and supporting the development of new foreign trade formats.

"We will continuously enrich, adjust and improve relevant measures and explore new customs support initiatives to support China's foreign trade this year," he said, adding that 90,000 companies registered in the first quarter of the year to engage in export and import activities, up 59.8 percent year-on-year.