A cargo train departs from Yinchuan, Northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region, for Budapest, Hungary. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]
Ningxia's imports and exports to countries along the Belt and Road reached 1.38 billion yuan (about $200.62 million) in the first two months of 2023, a year-on-year increase of 41.8 percent.
Over the past decade, Ningxia has played an important role in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) by actively integrating and serving its construction, making considerable efforts to develop the Silk Road Economic Belt, and continuously expanding its opening up to strengthen ties with related countries.
In addition, Ningxia's foreign trade has gotten off to a good start in the first two months of this year, with a total import and export value of 3.58 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.7 percent, which was 7.5 percentage points higher than the national growth rate.
With the release of policies to promote foreign trade development in Ningxia, key enterprises have maintained good production momentum, driving import and export growth and showing the strong vitality of foreign trade.
Ningxia's imports and exports to ASEAN, the EU, and the United States, the autonomous region’s three largest trading partners, maintained a substantial growth momentum in the first two months. Specifically, imports and exports with ASEAN gained 138.3 percent from the previous year to 720 million yuan; with the EU hit 700 million yuan, representing a year-on-year increase of 36 percent; and with the United States reaching 370 million yuan, showing a year-on-year increase of 26.2 percent.