China's Economic Relations with Singapore

It had been expected that the bilateral trade between the two countries were supposed to amount to 12 billion United States dollars. It would have been a record at that point of time. As per the statistics of the Trade Development Board of Singapore, bilateral trade between the two countries started during the year 1958.

According to available data, the bilateral trade between China and Singapore amounted to 11.28 billion up till the month of November in the year 2000. This was an improvement of 33.09% from the amount reached at the same period in 1999. This amount placed China in the top six trade partners of Singapore. The improvement of 33.09% in the trade between Singapore and China was substantially more than the 23.95% addition in the complete trade volume of Singapore in the same economic period. The total value of the bilateral trades, participated in by Singapore, was 247.7 billion United States dollars.

During January to November, 2000 Singapore exported goods and services worth 4.84 billion United States dollars. This was an improvement by 39.97%. The country imported goods and services worth 6.4 billion United States dollars from China and this was an improvement of 28.33%.
The officers working at the Economic and Commercial Counselor's Office in the Chinese Embassy in Singapore are of the opinion that bilateral trade in China and Singapore has increased as a result of the significant development of the economies of Singapore and China. Both the countries have also been able to make the most of their respective trade structures.

The experts have also observed that the ten best products that had been imported by Singapore from China were electronic goods that had high financial worth. Singapore also imported raw zinc from China, besides accessories and parts of equipments needed for autoprocessing. Also on the list are printed circuit boards, mini-motors, integrated circuits and disk drives of 3.5 inches. All these accounted for 35% of the total amount of goods imported by Singapore from China.

Of the products that were exported by Singapore to China petroleum and electronic goods occupied the pride of place. However, Singapore also exported other items like printed circuit boards, industrial refrigerating equipments and monointegrated circuits. All these items together were 37% of all the goods that had been exported by Singapore to China. As per the experts, the list of items that had been exported by Singapore to China reflects the fact that Singapore has the upper hand over China as far as oil refinery and electronics industries are concerned.