China posted a current account surplus of $249.9 billion in 2006, up 55.4 percent from $160.8 billion in 2005, the foreign exchange regulator said on Thursday. The surplus amounted to 9.5 percent of GDP in 2006, up from 2.9 percent in the year 2000, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange said.
It said China would use a mixture of tools including fiscal, monetary, industrial and land policies to bring more balance to its international payments. In doing so, it would seek to further reform its exchange rate mechanism and actively broaden the channels for using its foreign exchange reserves.
China would also take steps to boost consumption and rein in investment growth while seeking to step up imports and curb exports of energy-intensive and highly polluting products, the foreign exchange regulator said. Beijing would do more to facilitate outflows of capital while stemming inflows, the agency said.
The surplus last year on the nation's capital and financial fell 84 percent to $10 billion, the lowest level since 2001, SAFE said on its Web site (www.safe.gov.cn). The drop was due largely to strong growth in overseas securities investments, it said.
On the current account, China had a merchandise trade surplus of $217.7 billion and a deficit in services trade of $8.8 billion. Errors and omissions, a proxy for unrecorded capital flows, showed a deficit of $12.9 billion compared with a deficit in 2005 of $17 billion, SAFE said.
Foreign exchange reserves climbed $247.5 billion last year to reach $1.07 trillion at the end of 2006, it said. The reserves, which increased $207 billion in 2005, swelled further to $1.202 trillion at the end of March.