Economic Policy News
- Yuan rise 'not best' for cutting trade surplus
Date: 20-Mar-2007 Sources: (Shenzhen Daily)
THE government should rely more on structural adjustments such as raising the prices of natural resources than on gains in the yuan to narrow its trade surplus, the head of the statistics agency said.
Speaking at a forum Sunday, Xie Fuzhan, commissioner of the National Bureau of Statistics, said further yuan appreciation would not be the best method to trim a surplus that hit US$23.76 billion last month, the second-biggest monthly total on record.
'It might be a better solution to make some structural adjustments instead of just letting the yuan appreciate to address the problem,'Xie said in remarks published on the Web site of Xinhua.
To rein in export growth, the authorities could hoist prices of such resources as oil and allow labour costs to rise, he said.
Xie's remarks echoed those made by central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan last week.
Zhou said that the solution to reining in the country's massive surpluses lay in deep-seated structural reforms that, by definition, would not have an immediate impact.
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