China relies heavily on running very large trade surpluses every month as a way to create tens of millions of jobs, and that has become particularly important this year as youth unemployment has surged.Įxports have become even more important in the past couple of years as China has confronted a sharp slowdown in the housing market, after years of rampant speculation that drove apartment prices up tenfold or more in many Chinese cities. Why It MattersĮxport and import statistics provide one of the early indications each month of how the Chinese economy fared in the preceding month. Imports of agricultural products - China relies heavily on food from abroad as it improves the diet of its citizens - were down 7.9 percent from a year earlier, while imports of crude oil were up half a percentage point. Exports of medical and surgical instruments, which had boomed during the pandemic, were down 7.1 percent last month.īut exports of some products began to stabilize: Overseas sales of household appliances like refrigerators and washing machines, which fell in July, rose 11.4 percent in August. Exports of computers, a category that China has led for years, fell 18.2 percent in value from August 2022. These trends were reflected in the details of the August numbers. Many had stocked up on manufactured goods during the pandemic, often from China, which has by far the world’s largest factory sector.
With pandemic concerns now fading, households around the world, including in China, have shifted their spending patterns toward travel, restaurant meals and other services. Many multinational companies, especially large retailers in the United States, have become worried about the dependence of their supply chains on China as geopolitical tensions have increased in recent years and as international trade disputes have intensified, particularly between the United States and China.Ĭhina’s drastic “zero Covid” measures during the pandemic, particularly the weekslong lockdowns of Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and other big industrial centers and ports, led to many shipping delays as well as the departure from China of many expatriate managers for multinationals. Exports had plunged 14.5 percent from a year earlier in July. A Reuters survey forecast that exports had fallen 9.2 percent in August and imports 9 percent. He said Iran’s ministry of agriculture has declared its support for the OSEC idea, adding that the foreign ministry, lawmakers in the parliament and major Iranian businesses involved in saffron trade are being briefed on the issue.Economists had expected the August trade numbers to be slightly worse. Mostafavi said a main substructure to help OSEC succeed would be to set up an agglomerate of industries and services related to the field in the city of Torbat Heydariyeh, located in eastern Iran, which is known as the capital of the world’s saffron plantation. The businessman claimed that the OSEC could help Iran increase its share of the $8-bn global saffron trade 10-fold to reach nearly $4.5 billion a year.
He said the creation of OSEC would correct the current mistakes in standardization processes and would help other countries involved in saffron trade to have a better share of the global trade of the red gold. Mostafavi said the European buyers, including laboratories in Belgium, had “erroneously” identified the saffron produced in Afghanistan as the benchmark for importers. However, American sanctions and other issues have encouraged re-export of the Iranian saffron through the neighboring Afghanistan while causing direct exports from Iran to face various problems, including quality issues. Iran is the world’s top producer of saffron, with output continuing to grow in the recent past, especially since national currency rial plunged against hard currencies last year when the United States imposed its sanctions on the country.
“European countries do not recognize Iranian saffron standards,” Seyyed Ehsan Mostafavi told the IRNA agency, adding, “However, the real grade of the Iranian saffron will soon be established in the international markets through setting up the global bloc of OSEC.” A senior saffron planter and exporter said on Saturday that the Organization of Saffron Exporting Countries (OSEC) would greatly boost the global trade of saffron and would help countries like Iran have a better share of the multi-billion dollar business.
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