According to Julian Evans-Pritchard, an economist at Capital Economics in Singapore, the severe fall in exports largely reflected changes in the timing of the Lunar Year in China this year.
"In 2015, the holiday fell unusually late which meant that more of the pre-holiday rush to meet orders and less of the post holiday disruptions took place in February, causing exports to jump 48.9 percent year-on-year," he said.
I am not familiar with any of this, but could a lower SCSI be caused by more shipping supply being available as opposed to fewer containers being shipped? Is there an index that tracks the number of containers shipped?
Perhaps this is a dumb question, but if it fell by 25% and the prediction was it falling by 15%, do they mean to imply those who made that month's prediction weren't aware of the particulars of Lunar New Year?
Not a dumb question at all. Markets often behave irrationally, but they aren't that stupid. Market expectations (-14.5% export growth) definitely factor in seasonality. So it's very bad news.
To make matters worse, import growth (-13.8%) was also lower than market expectations (-12%).
As mentioned below, this suggests contracting overseas demand for Chinese exports AND contracting domestic consumption. Which adds up to lower than expected Chinese economic production.
We'll probably see another Chinese stimulus package soon. Hopefully they manage to deploy it without exacerbating the capital mis-allocation and higher private debt that the previous one caused (mostly poured into residential real-estate construction and speculation).
""China will face a more challenging situation in trade this year than 2015. Both imports and exports in February fell more than our expectations."
""China's exports declined the most since May 2009, suggesting that the overly strong CNY exchange rate has become an obstacle for the external sector"
""February's trade data is really poor and that will exert depreciation pressure on the yuan."
Pretty much this - Nothing happens in China during the new year celebration. We've had recent contact with Chinese companies who all warned us that there would be no progress until after the holiday.
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According to Julian Evans-Pritchard, an economist at Capital Economics in Singapore, the severe fall in exports largely reflected changes in the timing of the Lunar Year in China this year.
"In 2015, the holiday fell unusually late which meant that more of the pre-holiday rush to meet orders and less of the post holiday disruptions took place in February, causing exports to jump 48.9 percent year-on-year," he said.
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