Vice Minister of Commerce Yu Guangzhou said Tuesday that the amended Foreign Trade Law will likely be enacted in the first half of this year if everything goes smoothly.

He made the remarks at China Development Form 2004 Annual Meeting, which convened on March 21 in Beijing. The amended law is expected to strongly boost healthy and regulatory trade activities.

"China's surging economy and import have been pulling up world economy by leaps and bounds", said Yu.

China's import has been growing at average over 15 percent in the past two decades. The import growth rate in 2002 and 2003 was 21 percent and 40 percent respectively. In 2003, the import growth outpaced that of export by 5.3 percent.

Yu said that China will further its effort in keeping the imbalance between import and export, promoting liberalization and facilitation in trade investment and opposing to trade protectionism in any form.

"China will import advanced technologies and equipments, high-tech products, basic materials and competitive consumer products in large volume"

Meanwhile, China will elevate the quality of exporting commodities and provide international markets with products of good quality and competitive price.

(Ministry of Commerce March 24, 2004)