A further jump for China

On the eve of the New Lunar Year, the Beijing statistics office has released the trade data for the entire year 2010. It is quite natural to wonder whether the strong gains recorded with respect to 2009 will last through the upcoming Year of the Rabbit as regards both imports and exports of raw materials, plastics, rubber products, and machinery.
As for machinery, purchases from abroad grew by over 40 percentage points and the +72% posted by injection moulding machines is indeed impressive. Domestic demand is not satisfied by local manufacturers and Japanese providers have filled this gap in terms of quantities and especially in terms of quality.
As a whole, Italian sales of all types of plastics and rubber machinery recorded the best performance 2010/2009 with respect to the main competitors.
Looking at the trade in polymers, we see stability for imports (around 23.5 million tons) and growth in exports (up to 2.5 million tons) in light of the increased local capacity. Both imports and exports of plastics and rubber products were on the rise although sales abroad hold the lion's share.