Hong Kong Sept. exports recovered on China, Finance Chief says

Hong Kong’s exports rebounded in September on the back of a recovering Chinese economy, Financial Secretary Paul Chan said his blog post Sunday.

The city’s third-quarter gross domestic product should show a significant improvement from the two preceding three-month periods, Chan said.

Hong Kong’s GDP slumped by about 9% in both the first and second quarters as the coronavirus outbreak forced most countries to go into some form of lockdown. China, on which Hong Kong relies for half of its trade, posted 9.9% growth in exports and a 13.2% jump in imports last month, Chan said.

Consumer consumption in Hong Kong is also recovering, with the city so far managing to keep the outbreak under control, and residents’ spending has increased, the financial secretary said. Economic pressure will ease further as China recharges its economy, he said.

“In Hong Kong, the epidemic situation has been generally stable,” Chief Executive Carrie Lam said in a separate post on the government website. “This has not only given us some breathing space, but also allowed us to take more precise control measures and resume more economic and social activities gradually while keeping the epidemic in check.”

Hong Kong’s jobless rate for the July-to-September period increased to 6.4%, a 16-year high, as the service industry virtually shut down because of the pandemic. The city’s government has released more than HK$300 billion ($38.7 billion) in relief measures this year, Chan said.