Trade alert

  • MSG: Vietnam made a final anti-dumping midterm review. The Ministry of Industry and Trade of Vietnam recently issued a resolution to make the first mid-term review and final ruling on anti-dumping of monosodium glutamate originating in China and Indonesia. Among them, the anti-dumping duty on the products involved in China was adjusted to 960-1778 RMB/ton.

Trade

  • EU: The trade surplus in pharmaceutical products will hit a new high in 2021. Eurostat recently released data that in 2021, the EU’s trade surplus in pharmaceutical products will hit a record high of 136 billion euros. During the same period, Germany was the EU’s largest exporter of pharmaceuticals, and the US and Switzerland were the EU’s major trading partners for pharmaceuticals.
  • Myanmar: From April 20, import licenses for goods will have to be submitted before arriving at the port.
  • Vietnam: Orders for wood products companies have been placed in the third quarter. Vietnam’s wood processing and export industry has quickly resumed production. In the first quarter, the export volume of the wood furniture industry reached 3.94 billion US dollars, showing a slight growth trend, and corporate orders have been placed in the third quarter.
  • Kazakhstan: From April 11, entry and exit restrictions at land ports with Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Russia will be lifted
    India: Record exports at $418 billion. According to data from India’s Ministry of Industry and Trade, total merchandise exports from April 2021 to March 2022 reached a record $418 billion, a year-on-year increase of 43.2%. Among them, India’s merchandise exports in March hit a record high of 40.38 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 14.53%.
  • Japan: Foreign reserves continued to grow negatively, and the surplus was the lowest in seven years. Recently, the Ministry of Finance of Japan announced that the foreign exchange reserves at the end of March were US$1,356.071 billion, a decrease of US$28.502 billion compared with the end of February, showing a negative growth for four consecutive months. At the same time, it was released that the country’s current account balance in February was a surplus of 1.6483 trillion yen, a decrease of 42.5% year-on-year.
  • Egypt: Announced that foreign reserves fell to $37.082 billion. A few days ago, the Central Bank of Egypt announced that as of the end of March, the bank’s foreign exchange reserves were about $37.082 billion, compared with about $40.99 billion at the end of February, a decrease of about $3.91 billion. It was the first decline after 20 consecutive months of growth.
  • Brazil: Online shopping will increase by 24% in 2021 to 40.5 billion reais. According to a study conducted by GS&NPD in partnership with Food Service Brasil, online consumption in Brazil will reach 40.5 billion reais in 2021, a 24% increase from the previous year. The survey also noted that total visits to websites and apps rose 13 percent to 2.2 billion hits.
  • Global container ship orders reached their highest level in 15 years. Recently, according to the calculation of the Baltic International Shipping Council (BIMCO), the current order for container ships has exceeded 6.5 million TEUs, which is the first time in 15 years that this level has been reached. In 18 months, container ship orders have increased by 6 million TEUs.
  • Maersk: Announced the establishment of an air cargo company. Maersk has announced the establishment of Maersk Air Cargo. This move can better meet customer needs, provide customers with integrated logistics services, and improve the company’s position in the global air cargo market. It is expected to be fully operational in the second half of 2022.

Industry

  • China Automobile Association: In March, automobile production and sales data were 2.241 million and 2.234 million, down 9.1% and 11.7% year-on-year. From January to March, automobile production and sales totaled 6.484 million and 6.509 million, up 2.0% and 0.2% year-on-year.
  • Passenger Federation: In March, the retail sales of new energy passenger vehicles reached 445,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 137.6% and a month-on-month increase of 63.1%, which was better than the previous March trend. From January to March, the domestic retail sales of new energy passenger vehicles was 1.070 million, a year-on-year increase of 146.6%. In March, there were 13 companies whose wholesale sales exceeded 10,000 vehicles (an increase of 2 from the same period last year), including 104,338 BYD vehicles, 65,814 Tesla China vehicles, 51,157 SAIC-GM-Wuling vehicles, and 21,817 Chery Automobiles.
  • IDC: Worldwide shipments of traditional PCs, including desktops, notebooks and workstations, fell 5.1% in the first quarter, but beat previous forecasts. The PC market ended two years of double-digit growth, but that doesn’t mean the industry is in a downward spiral. Supply chain and logistics remain challenging, but suppliers still shipped 80.5 million PCs in the quarter.
  • China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance: In March, China’s power battery sales were 24.5GWh, a year-on-year increase of 175.3%. In March, the installed capacity of power batteries in China was 21.4Gwh, a year-on-year increase of 138.0%; from January to March, the cumulative installed capacity of power batteries in China was 51.3Gwh, a cumulative increase of 120.7% year-on-year. Among them, the loading volume of ternary batteries increased by 54.4% year-on-year.
  • Science and Technology Daily: Wheat is the most widely distributed food crop in the world. More than 40% of the world’s population eats wheat as the staple food. It is reported that the applied plant genome team of Nanjing Agricultural University College of Agriculture cooperated with Oklahoma State University and other institutions to discover and clone a key gene TaCOL-B5 that improves wheat grain yield.
  • The domestic game version number ushered in a restart after the suspension of issuance after July last year. According to the official website of the State Press and Publication Administration, the first batch of domestic game version numbers were issued in April, and a total of 45 domestic games were approved. Among the games with the approved version number this time, the key games include Zhongqingbao’s “Casting Time Craftsman”, Youzu Network’s “Youth Three Kingdoms: Pocket Battle”, and Sanqi Mutual Entertainment’s “Dream Voyage”.

China

  • Central Bank: At the end of March, the M2 balance was 249.77 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.7%. In March, the cumulative increase of social financing scale was 12.06 trillion yuan, 1.77 trillion yuan more than the same period of the previous year; RMB loans increased by 8.34 trillion yuan, an increase of 425.8 billion yuan year-on-year.
  • Bureau of Statistics: In March, the CPI was flat month-on-month, up 1.5% year-on-year, an increase of 0.6 percentage points from the previous month. Among them, food prices fell by 1.5%, affecting the CPI drop by about 0.28 percentage points. The PPI increased by 1.1% month-on-month and 8.3% year-on-year, a decrease of 0.5 percentage points from the previous month.
  • Suzhou: After nearly three years, the policy of restricting the sale of second-hand houses in Suzhou has finally been relaxed. Since April 11, the sales restriction policy has been adjusted, and the sales restriction of second-hand houses has been changed from 5 years to 3 years.
  • Jilin Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology: China FAW has fully resumed work on April 11, and the first batch of 47 parts and components companies are returning to work in an orderly manner. Previously, on March 13, China’s FAW decided that the five major vehicle plants in Changchun, including FAW Toyota and FAW-Volkswagen, had plans to suspend production.
  • Accelerate the construction of a unified national market. On April 10, the “Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Accelerating the Construction of a Large National Market” was released, which clearly stated that it would speed up the establishment of a unified national market system and rules, and break local protection and market segmentation.
  • Beijing: Beijing’s Daxing District supports the development of the commercial aerospace industry. It is proposed to focus on industrialization projects such as rockets, satellites, and ground terminals, and enterprises that newly purchase R&D and production equipment can receive up to 20 million yuan in financial support each year.
  • Shenzhen has accelerated the cultivation and expansion of market entities.

Company

  • Twitter: Tesla CEO Elon Musk has decided not to join Twitter’s board. Twitter announced on April 5 that Musk would join Twitter’s board of directors. On the same day, Musk updated and disclosed that he held 9.1% of Twitter’s shares. He considered himself an active investor in Twitter and became Twitter’s largest shareholder.
  • BMW: The semiconductor shortage is expected to continue until 2023. We are still in the midst of a severe chip shortage. Improvements are expected next year, but 2023 will also still face basic shortages.
  • Lazada: Merchants are prohibited from carrying out any fraudulent behavior, and a maximum of 16 points will be deducted for violations.
  • H&M Group: More than 200 stores will be closed. Recently, the Swedish clothing retailer H&M Group announced that in the first quarter, the group only opened two new stores for Arket and H&M Home, with a total of 4,721 stores under all brands, a decrease of 228 compared with the same period last year, and plans to open new stores and closed stores are 95 and 224 respectively.
  • TSMC: In March, it achieved a record revenue of NT$171.967 billion.

World

  • Some parts of Western European countries have experienced a low temperature that is rare in a century.
  • Indonesia and Canada: Seek to expand cooperation in rare earth and green energy fields.
  • Afghanistan: A multi-provincial ore mining project will be launched.