From RBS economist Louis Kuijs (via FastFT):
- China’s yoy export growth was still distorted in April by large-scale over-invoicing in early 2013.
- Over-invoicing was happening again in early 2014 but the scale was substantially less than a year ago; in fact it virtually stopped in March. Since the policy-driven depreciation in late February, expectations on the likely direction of the CNY/USD shifted away from the previous perception of a one-way bet on CNY appreciation.
- As a result, the over-invoicing issue has made yoy export growth in early 2014 look significantly worse than it has been in reality.
- Thus, we think that, after adjusting for over-invoicing issues, underlying export growth rose from 3.5% yoy in March to around 8% yoy in April, in USD terms.
