Hong Kong's exports grew at a slower pace last month, lagging expectations.
Total exports rose in value to HK$126.2 billion, up 14.1 per cent compared with the same month last year, according to the Census and Statistics Department. That was well off May's 22.3 per cent growth rate.
Economists contacted ahead of yesterday's announcement had forecast exports would rise by 20 per cent or better in June.
Guonan Ma, head of North Asian economics at Merrill Lynch, said: 'The trade-data series, all the months, has been quite volatile, so I hate to read too much into it.'
Growth will be tougher to maintain because statistics so far this year have been figured on the basis of extraordinarily depressed year-earlier levels, a situation that will change next month. Hong Kong's trade shrank by a monthly average of 6 per cent in the first half of last year but picked up in the second half, growing by a monthly average of nearly 7.5 per cent.
But year-on-year comparisons offer little insight into last month's surprisingly slow growth, since exports were still shrinking in the year-earlier period.
Andy Xie Guozhong, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter's Greater China economist, had attributed Hong Kong's strong export performance directly to the mainland's strong export performance. Nearly 90 per cent of the SAR's exports are re-exports, and nearly 60 per cent of those originate on the mainland.
