China Trade Information

Wuhan Iron & Steel Group, a major iron and steel producer in China, has showed interest in the proposed sale of iron ore asset by Aquila Resources, the fourth-largest Australian mining company by market capitalization, the South China Morning Post reported.

The company had inked a confidentiality agreement with Aquila late last month, which enabled it to access the latter’s financial data, according to the report.
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Aluminum Corp of China (Chinalco), China’s top producer of aluminum, has secured approval from Australian regulators to lift its stake in Rio Tinto Group to 11% from the previous 9%, which added uncertainties to rival miner BHP Billiton’s takeover proposal of Rio for US$143 billion.

Wayne Swan, Federal Treasurer of Australia, has decided to give the green light to the Chinese’s company to raise shareholdings in Rio after careful consideration of national interest issues, adding that Chinalco had agreed not to seek representation on Rio’s board.
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China’s auto imports amounted to 247,000 motor vehicles in the first seven months this year, representing a year-on-year rise of 48%, and the growth rate was 14.6 percentage points higher than the year-earlier level, according to the statistics from the General Administration of Customs released yesterday.

The faster growth in the auto imports was mainly a result of global automakers’ entering China due to the downturn of U.S. economy and the weakening sales in the U.S. and European markets affected by the surging oil prices, said the customs.
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Sinopec, Asia’s largest oil refiner, announced on Friday that its net profits in the first half year plummeted 77.3% to RMB 8.255 billion (HK$9.5 billion) from RMB 36.38 billion in the same period last year, citing international accounting standards.

The company attributed the dive in net profits to significant refining losses caused by soaring international crude oil prices and tightly-controlled domestic oil product prices.
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China raises on-grid electricity tariffs Wednesday, in a move to reduce domestic power producers’ losses and help boost supplies. Read the rest of this entry »

China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Association (CPCIA) said on Tuesday the country had produced 16.17 million tons of crude oil in July, up 5 percent over the same month last year.

This brought the nation’s crude oil production to 110 million tons in the first seven months, an increase of 2.2 percent over the same period last year, the CPCIA said.

The nation processed 200 million tons of crude oil and produced 120 million tons of refined oil during the January to July period, an increase of 5.8 percent and 6.9 percent, respectively, over the same period last year. Read the rest of this entry »