Some Products to Witness Lower Tariffs

The Chinese government has decided to impose lower tariffs on imported coal and some other products.

According to the news from China’s Ministry of Finance, China would have further adjusted the imports and exports tariff stipulations, including the most favored nations tariff, temporary annual tariff rate, conventional tariff, preferential tariff and tariff rules and stipulations since January 1, 2009.

It was known that China would continue to carry out its commitment of tariff reduction which was made in 2002 when China was allowed into the WTO. The imports tariff for six kinds of products including strawberry would be lowered. Tariff rate quotas would be still imposed on the wheat, corn, paddy, rice, sugar, wool, wool top, cotton, urea, compound fertilizer and diammonium phosphate. In addition, sliding duties on the cotton beyond the quota would be continued without any changes on the tariff rate. The 1% temporary in-quota tariff would be imposed on urea, compound fertilizer and diammonium phosphate. Certain specific and compound duties would be imposed on frozen chicken and the other 44 products with no changes to the rate.

After these changes, China’s average tariff rate was still 9.8%, of which the average tariff rate for agricultural products was 15.2% and the rate for industrial products was 8.9%. In that way, China’s commitment to reducing tariff could have been fully carried out.

In order to promote the economic structure adjustment and realize the goals of saving resources and energy as well as protecting ecology and environment, China would impose lower-rate temporary annual tariff on more than 600 kinds of products, including coal, granite, phosphate ore and celestite, in the year of 2010

Meanwhile, alternative duty would continue to be imposed on the imported natural rubber in 2010. The unchangeable temporary tariff rate would be still applicable for exporting crude oil, rare earth, wood pulp and billet steel. The tariff rate for exporting urea and ammonium phosphate would vary from the domestic demand in different seasons.

With the goal of expanding bilateral and multilateral cooperation, in 2010 China would carry out the conventional tariff whose rate will be lower than the most favored nations tariff on some kinds of imported commodities originated from the ten countries of the Southeast Asia, Chile, Pakistan, New Zealand and Korea according to the free trade contracts with these countries and the Asia-Pacific Countries Trade Agreement. In addition, in order to consolidate the trade partnership between Mainland China and Hong Kong and Macau, the government will continue the zero-tariff policies over the products from these two places and for which the favorable tariff conditions had been formed. Simultaneously, China would continue to impose preferential tariff for the products from Laos, Ethiopia and the other 39 least developed countries.

Moreover, China would make some changes to a part of tariff items of the tariff regulations by adding Hydroxylamine sulfate, recombinant human insulin, glacial acetic acid for food and fast hardening permanent magnet sheet. These changes couldn’t violate the principles of World Customs Organization. After these changes, the number of imports and exports tax items of China in 2010 would be increased from 7868 in 2009 to 7923.