BEIJING, Aug 10, (Agencies): China’s exports and imports slowed for the second consecutive month in July, official data showed Friday, highlighting worsening conditions in the world’s second-biggest economy.
The figures — sharply below market expectations — add to concerns that China’s economy is still losing steam despite government efforts to prop up growth and investment, in an effort to lessen the impact of the global slowdown.
Analysts said the weak data, combined with disappointing figures released Thursday, created further impetus for Beijing to announce more stimulus policies.
China’s exports grew at a marginal one percent in July from a year earlier to $176.9 billion, the General Administration of Customs said in a statement, down from the 11.3 percent gain seen in June.
Imports rose 4.7 percent year-on-year to $151.8 billion last month, it said, compared with the June increase of 6.3 percent, indicating slowing domestic demand.

The trade surplus narrowed to $25.1 billion last month from $31.7 billion in June.
China, the world’s biggest exporter, has been hit by weakness in overseas economies including debt-ravaged Europe, a key trading partner, while a sluggish property market and softening consumer spending have also proved problematic.
Exports to Europe fell 3.6 percent to $192.4 billion in the first seven months of the year from the same period in 2011, according to the data.
Shipments to the United States, meanwhile, rose 11.4 percent year on year in the seven months through July to $195.4 billion.
“This complicates the prospects for an imminent recovery,” IHS Global Insight economists Ren Xianfang and Alistair Thornton said regarding the July trade data.
“With the export sector losing speed faster than expected, the government’s current investment stimulus plan looks woefully inadequate,” they wrote in a research note.
“The government is likely to respond by ramping-up its stimulus efforts, with both monetary and fiscal guns firing.”

China’s fiscal spending jumped in July to 37.1 percent from a year earlier, quickening from 17.7 percent in June, official data showed on Friday, the latest evidence that the government is stepping up efforts to combat an economic slowdown.
The world’s second-largest economy expanded at the slowest pace in more than three years in the second quarter and the latest data pointed to weaker factory output and retail sales, fanning market expectations of fresh policy easing from Beijing.
Fiscal expenditure of 952.8 billion yuan ($149.83 billion) in July consisted of 167 billion yuan by central government and 785.8 billion yuan by local governments, the Ministry of Finance said in a statement on its website, www.mof.gov.cn

Subsidies
The government has been fast-tracking some infrastructure projects and doling out subsidies for energy-efficient home appliances in hopes of giving a lift to its economy.
Government spending was focused on key programmes to improve people’s livelihood, the ministry said. Spending on affordable housing soared 39.2 percent during the January-July period from a year earlier while that on transportation rose 34.9 percent.
Hong Kong’s economy shrank 0.1 percent in the second quarter due to weak exports amid slowing growth in the global economy, the government said Friday.
The contraction in the second quarter was worse than the median forecast of 0.1 percent growth by five economists in a Dow Jones Newswires survey.

“On a seasonally adjusted quarter-to-quarter comparison, real GDP dipped marginally by 0.1 percent in the second quarter, following 0.6 percent growth in the first quarter,” an official statement said.
Compared with the same period last year, gross domestic product expanded 1.1 percent, helped by a lower base of comparison a year earlier when a massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan disrupted the country’s export industry.
The government revised its 2012 full-year GDP growth forecast to 1-2 percent from 1-3 percent previously.
“The negative spillovers from the sluggishness of the advanced economies to Asia have... turned increasingly visible,” it said.
“Amid mounting headwinds to the global economy, the external environment would thus remain difficult and continue to overshadow Hong Kong’s export outlook in the near term.”