China's trade surplus in May soared to 22.45 billion U.S. dollars, up 73 percent from the same period of last year, the General Administration of Customs said on Monday.

The figure was close to February's 23.7 billion U.S. dollars, the second highest monthly level on record.

Exports grew to 94.1 billion U.S. dollars, up by 28.7 percent year-on-year, a slight rise of 1.9 percentage point from April, said the administration.

Imports rose to 71.6 billion U.S. dollars, increasing 19.1 percent over the same period of last year, or about 2.2 percentage point higher from April.

Aggregate surplus for the first five months jumped 84 percent year-on-year to 85.7 billion U.S. dollars, it said.

Huang Guohua, senior analyst with the administration said the surplus growth in May reflected enterprises' response to the government's latest trade policy change.

The Ministry of Finance said on May 21 that the country would impose extra export tariffs, while cutting import duties as of June 1 to narrow its widening trade surplus.

"Therefore, exports surged ahead of the export tax hike and importers delayed shipment until import duty cut comes into effect," said Huang.

The European Union remained China's top trading partner, with bilateral trade volume reaching 129.9 billion U.S. dollars in the first five months of 2007, up 29 percent from the same period of last year.

The second comes the United States, with a trade volume of 115.17 billion U.S. dollars.

Trade between China and India jumped 53.7 percent to 14.2 billion U.S. dollars, with the fastest growth rate among the country's top ten trading partners.

China should make greater efforts to shift the economic and trade growth modes and expand the imports to narrow its yawning trade gap, rather than simply curbing the exports, said Gao Hucheng, vice commerce minister.

"The soaring exports were mainly due to strong global demand," said Zhang Xiaoji with the National Development and Reform Commission, noting that the surplus does not have much to do with the yuan appreciation.

Analysts say the multibillion-dollar surplus is likely to continue. Yang Hongbin, an official with the Ministry of Commerce, forecast the trade surplus for the first half of the year would hit 110 billion U.S. dollars.

Source: Xinhua