China's coal imports surged to the second highest in March, just below the all-time high registered in January 2020, showed the latest customs data released on April 13.
The country imported a total of 41.17 million tonnes in March, surging 150.65% or 24.74 million tonenes on the year, according to the General Administration of Customs (GAC).
The March figure was also 41.12% or 12 million tonnes higher than 29.17 million tonnes in February, data showed.
It was only second to the all-time high imports of 43.6 million tonnes recorded in January 2020 when customs authorities gave the permits to cargoes arrived in the last month of 2019 in an effort to cap total imports below 300 million tonnes.
March's high imports came with worries over reinstating of import tariffs from April, in addition to more arrivals from Mongolia, Russia and Australia.
Value of the imports totaled $5.27 billion in March, soaring 127.57% year on year and 34.94% month on month. Sxcoal calculated the average import price at $127.99/t, down $12.99/t year on year and $5.87/t month on month.
China imported a total of 1.02 billion tonnes of coal in January-March, up 96.1% on the year. The imports value was $13.56 billion, up 63.1% on the year, the GAC data showed.
(Writing by Rebecca Liu Editing by Harry Huo)
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