Guangdong Province, a major economic powerhouse in southern China, reported a recovery in foreign trade to the pre-crisis level in the first quarter of this year, according to data released Wednesday by local customs house.

Between January and March, Guangdong's external trade amounted to 153.2 billion U.S. dollars, a growth of 32.7 percent on the same period of last year, or up 1.9 percent on the same period of 2008, which was prior to the global economic downturn.

The total included 85.93 billion U.S. dollars in export value, up 21.2 percent year-on-year, and 67.27 billion dollars in import value, up 50.9 percent.

The export volume accounted for 27.2 percent of the nation's total, while the import volume made up for 22.3 percent.

However, the province's foreign sales failed to recover to the pre-crisis level, due largely to increasing production cost, slow recovery in demand abroad and trade barriers on international markets.

Guangdong's export value in the first three months of this year was still 1.2 percent lower than the level in the pre-crisis period of January-March 2008.