11:58 a.m. September 26, 2008 Inner Mongolia News Net
According to the Customs statistics as released by the General Administration of Customs recently, China’s soybean imports exceeded 2,000 tons in the first seven months of the year, totaling 2,073 tons and registering a growth of 22.8% compared with that of the same period last year. The mean import price is USD 592/t, or an increase of 78%. With such increase in both import quantity and price, soybean import value reached as high as USD 12.27 billion in the first seven months, registering an increase of 120%. In July, mean soybean import price reached a record high and the quantity of imports was kept high. Even since the fourth quarter last year, the mean import price of soybeans has been increasingly obviously and reached USD 628/t in July that was a growth of 76.9%. From May to July running, China’s monthly imports of soybeans were kept at 3.5 million tons per month.
The US is still the major source of imports and soybean imports from Argentina increase rapidly. In the first seven months, China imported 9.524 million tons of soybeans from the US, registering a growth of 21.5% and accounting for 45.9% of China’s total soybean imports in the same period. China imported 6.913 and 4.125 million tons of soybeans from Brazil and Argentina respectively, registering a growth of 15.7% and 36.5% respectively.
Foreign-funded enterprises play a leading role in soybean imports and the imports by state-owned and private enterprises have kept increasing rapidly. In the first seven months, China’s foreign-funded enterprises imported 11.83 million tons of soybeans, registering a growth of 11.1% and accounting for 57% of China’s soybean imports in the same period that is 6 percentage points down compared with the same period last year. State-owned and private enterprises imported 5.611 and 2.697 million tons of soybeans respectively, registering a growth of 49.6% and 38.8% respectively. In addition, collective enterprises imported 597,000 tons, registering a growth of 11.2%.
