China's trade volume of machinery and electronic products rose 22.8 percent year on year to US$743.54 billion in the first eight months of this year, the Ministry of Commerce said on Thursday.

Trade volume of machinery and electronic products, the country's largest foreign trade sector, represented 54.3 percent of the country's total foreign trade in the same period.

The trade figure included US$431.5 billion in exports, up 28.2 percent year on year, and US$312.04 billion in imports, up 16.1 percent, said the ministry.

The imports of machinery and electronic products rose 15.4 percent in July, which reversed the monthly declining trend recorded since the beginning of the year.

The imports were expected to rise in the second half, as the country's policies to balance the trade began to work, analysts said, forecasting the import growth of machinery and electronic products at around 17 percent for the whole year.

The Ministry of Finance said on May 21 that it would impose extra export tariffs while cutting import duties as of June 1 to narrow its widening trade surplus.

China's trade surplus in machinery and electronic goods during the eight months totaled US$119.46 billion, accounting for 73.8 percent of the country's total, 3.2 percentage points lower than that of the first half.

The ministry said China also exported and imported US$391.33 billion of high-tech products during the eight months, up 20.9 percent.

High-tech products account for 28.6 percent of the country's foreign trade in the same period, with exports totaling US$211.45 billion, up 24.8 percent, and imports US$179.88 billion, up 16.7 percent.

In the first eight months, trade volume of the processing trade sector hit US$612.84 billion, up 18.5 percent from a year earlier, which was 2.1 percentage points lower than the same period last year, the ministry said.

The Chinese government has moved to curb the development of the processing trade to address its trade imbalance, pledging to annually revise the list of "restrained" products in the processing trade sector.

The policy, becoming effective from Aug. 23, will cover the processing trade involving 1,853 kinds of products of plastics, furniture and textiles and other labor-intensive industries.

However, the trade surplus of the processing trade sector still accounts for 94 percent of China's total trade surplus for the first eight months, which stood at US$161.75 billion.

(Xinhua News Agency September 14, 2007)