China Defends Export Data after Economists’ Skepticism

China’s customs administration said every dollar of trade is documented, defending the quality of export data that analysts at UBS AG and Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. (ANZ) said may fail to capture the true picture.

“Customs import and export statistics are based upon actual customs declarations,” the General Administration of Customs said in an e-mailed statement on 14 January, responding to questions submitted by News Agency on Jan. 11. “In our published export and import data, every dollar has a corresponding customs declaration document to back it.”

China’s unexpected 14.1 percent export gain in December from a year earlier spurred skepticism from economists at banks including UBS, which cited discrepancies with other nations’ trade data. The Ministry of Commerce said on 15 January that exporters hurried shipments before a waiver of inspection fees expired at the end of the month and it was wrong to speculate that the data was false.

After the release of the December data, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and ANZ cited a divergence from overseas orders in a manufacturing index, while Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd. said the increase could indicate exporters’ rush to finish year-end orders and government pressure to report exports before the end of the year to get closer to the official 2012 target of 10 percent trade growth.

“It is possible that local governments may have tried to boost exports data by either making round trips in special trade zones” or by exporting “earlier than otherwise in an attempt to improve the annual exports data,” Goldman Sachs’ Beijing- based economists Yu Song and Yin Zhang wrote in a Jan. 10 note.

Customs collects trade statistics “in accordance with the relevant laws and regulations,” according to the agency’s statement. Companies within special-trade zones, or bonded zones, that have actual transactions with overseas partners are included in the statistics, while transactions with domestic companies aren’t included in data, customs said.