From January to October, the total import and export volume reached 25.95 trillion yuan, up 1.1% year-on-year-the import and export trade stabilized and improved.

A few days ago, the State Council held a regular briefing on the State Council policy. The relevant person in charge of the Ministry of Commerce introduced the implementation opinions of the General Office of the State Council on promoting the innovation and development of foreign trade and answered questions from reporters on hot issues. The data shows that since the beginning of this year, all localities and departments have coordinated the prevention and control of epidemic situation and stabilized foreign trade, and achieved positive results. The import and export have stabilized better and better than expected. From January to October, the total import and export volume of China reached 25.95 trillion yuan, up 1.1% year-on-year, and the scale reached a new high in the same period in history.

Policies play an effective role in helping.

Since the beginning of this year, what is the implementation effect of a series of policies to stabilize foreign trade? Li Xinggan, director of the Foreign Trade Department of the Ministry of Commerce, said that various policies have played an effective role in helping foreign trade enterprises, mainly in five aspects:

The role of export tax rebate has been effectively enhanced. This year, the tax rebate rate for 1,464 products was raised in full, benefiting 25,000 export enterprises. Improve the speed of tax refund processing, shorten the average processing time to less than 8 days, and further reduce the problem of corporate capital occupation.

Give full play to the function of export credit insurance. In the first three quarters, Export Credit Insurance provided assistance to nearly 140,000 foreign trade enterprises, with a year-on-year increase of nearly 28%, including over 110,000 small and micro enterprises.

Foreign trade credit support has been significantly increased. Nearly 20 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities across the country have established a "credit guarantee+guarantee" financing model, which has effectively alleviated the financing problems of small and medium-sized micro-foreign trade enterprises.

The level of trade facilitation continued to improve. The compliance cost of import and export of a single container in China was reduced to $318 and $330 respectively. In September this year, the overall customs clearance time for China’s import and export was 35.02 hours and 1.86 hours respectively, which significantly improved the customs clearance efficiency.

The government’s public services continued to improve. Establish a direct reporting information service platform for key foreign trade and foreign-funded enterprises, and strengthen early warning and legal services for economic and trade frictions. The Ministry of Commerce has provided legal services to more than 30,000 enterprises this year, and issued more than 1,500 relevant early warning messages. The average time for foreign trade enterprises to know the case has been shortened by 7 days compared with last year.

Export products have achieved good results in domestic sales.

Against the background of the global epidemic and the change of external demand, what new progress has been made in developing the domestic market for China’s export commodities?

Li Xinggan introduced that since the General Office of the State Council issued the "Implementation Opinions on Supporting Export Products to Domestic Sales" this year, the Ministry of Commerce has supported marketable export commodities to explore the domestic market and achieved a series of positive results. "Supporting marketable export products to be sold domestically has stabilized foreign trade entities and industrial chain supply chains, expanded domestic consumption and industrial upgrading needs, created new market opportunities and development space, and enriched and met people’s needs for high-quality life." Li xinggan said.

Build channels to speed up the transfer to domestic sales. In conjunction with various localities, a series of activities to turn pedestrian street exports into domestic sales have been held one after another, and enterprises have been supported to explore the domestic market through various channels such as direct purchase of orders from supermarkets and online sales docking. Organize domestic buyers to purchase foreign trade goods at the Canton Fair, and all localities support enterprises to expand domestic sales channels according to local conditions.

Use investment projects to drive domestic sales. All localities support powerful foreign trade enterprises to participate in major projects such as new infrastructure construction, new urbanization construction, transportation and water conservancy.

Promote the convergence of standards and promote the transfer to domestic sales. We will expand the publicity and promotion of products with the same line, the same standard and the same quality, and expand the scope of "three products" from food and agricultural products to consumer goods such as toys, furniture and clothing. The results of a questionnaire survey of 4,130 foreign trade enterprises show that over 40% of foreign trade enterprises have started the business of exporting to domestic sales.

Li Xinggan pointed out that there are still practical challenges in domestic market cultivation, brand promotion and team building in domestic sales when enterprises export products to domestic sales. "The Ministry of Commerce will work with all localities, departments and relevant industry organizations to further implement various policies and measures in the State Council, and rely on the strong domestic market potential and space to promote a virtuous circle and coordinated development of domestic and foreign trade." Li xinggan said.

Promote the innovative development of foreign trade.

Faced with the impact of the epidemic, China’s foreign trade rose against the trend, and this achievement was hard-won.

Ren Hongbin, Assistant Minister of Commerce, pointed out that the stabilization of import and export trade in China benefited from many factors: first, major strategic achievements were made in coordinating epidemic prevention and control and economic and social development; second, policies and measures to stabilize foreign trade were effective; third, international cooperation in epidemic prevention and control was deepened to contribute to the increase of foreign trade; fourth, the advantages of industrial chain and supply chain were fully stimulated; fifth, online and offline exhibitions helped enterprises to explore markets.

Recently, the General Office of the State Council issued the "Implementation Opinions on Promoting the Innovation and Development of Foreign Trade", put forward the tasks of "five optimizations" and "three constructions" and defined the implementation path to promote the innovation and development of foreign trade.

The "five optimizations" are to optimize the international market layout, domestic regional layout, business entities, commodity structure and trade mode. The "three constructions" are to build a foreign trade transformation and upgrading base, a trade promotion platform and an international marketing system.

According to reports, "five optimizations" and "three constructions" are the tasks and means to explore and constantly enrich and improve in foreign trade practice for many years, and are important starting points for promoting foreign trade innovation and development. The "Implementation Opinions" put forward innovative measures to accelerate the promotion of "five optimizations" and "three constructions", which will provide strong support for enhancing the comprehensive competitiveness of foreign trade. The Ministry of Commerce will earnestly implement the "Implementation Opinions" and steadily promote the innovative development of foreign trade.

Ren Hongbin pointed out that the current COVID-19 epidemic is still spreading around the world, the international demand has dropped sharply, the supply chain of the industrial chain is not circulating smoothly, trade protectionism is on the rise, and uncertainties and unstable factors have increased significantly. "At the same time, we must see that China’s foreign trade is resilient and has great potential, and its enterprises have strong innovation ability. The long-term positive development trend has not changed." Ren Hongbin said. (Reporter Wang Wenzheng)