During the “12th Five-Year Plan” period, Hunan actively responded to the impact of the weak global economic recovery, vigorously developed an open economy, and promoted steady growth in foreign trade. The reporter recently learned from the Provincial Bureau of Statistics that during the “12th Five-Year Plan” period, Hunan’s total import and export volume reached 790.201 billion yuan, an average annual increase of 14.9%. Among them, exports were 477.242 billion yuan and imports were 312.959 billion yuan, with an average annual growth of 19.2% and 8.6% respectively.

According to statistics from the Bureau of Statistics, in 2015, the import and export of Hunan's general trade was 106.27 billion yuan, a drop of 16.5%. The total volume of imports and exports was 182.54 billion yuan, ranking 19th in the country. However, it is worth noting that, in 2015, the import and export goods of special customs supervision areas were 13.15 billion yuan, an increase of 89%, which achieved a huge increase.

Hong Kong, ASEAN, and the United States have always been the main trading partners of Hunan, but stimulated by the policies of the FTA, the bilateral trade between Hunan, South Korea, and Australia in the 12th Five-Year Plan period has risen in a contrarian direction. Taking 2015 as an example, the bilateral trade volume between Hunan, South Korea, and Australia was 9.32 billion yuan and 7.6 billion yuan respectively, an increase of 54.8% and 5.5% respectively.

Data show that during the "12th Five-Year Plan" period, Hunan's mechanical and electrical products have grown at an average annual rate of 27.8%, accounting for 52.3% of the province's total exports over the same period, an increase of 18.3 percentage points over 2010. In addition, our province exported 22.7 billion yuan of high-tech products in 2015, an increase of 54%. During the “12th Five-Year Plan” period, the average annual growth rate was 44.8%, an increase of 11.9 percentage points from 2010.

From a specific commodity point of view, in 2015, the province’s auto exports reached 3.76 billion yuan, an increase of 12.7%; steel exports were 6.04 billion yuan, a decrease of 24.6%; and garments, shoes, ceramics, furniture, fireworks, textiles, bags and other labor-intensive products Exports have declined in varying degrees.

With the increase of labor costs and the aging of the population in China, export enterprises, especially small and micro enterprises, are in a difficult stage of climbing. The production and operation status of some industries and enterprises is not optimistic. It is understood that in 2015, the export orders of many types of labor-intensive products in our province decreased by 10%-30%, and the traditional labor-intensive products such as textiles and clothing, furniture, and bags dropped by 28.9%.