Buyer Quality of the 125th Canton Fair is steadily increasing

At the concluding press conference for the 125th Canton Fair, Xu Bing, spokesperson and Deputy Secretary General of Canton Fair, Deputy Director General of China Foreign Trade Centre, introduced buyer attendance of this session.

Xu said that at present global economic and trade growth has slowed and China’s foreign trade development faces more complex and severe situation. In the meanwhile, important holidays of some countries coincide with the fair dates, which has had some effect on buyer attendance. This session, buyer attendance totals 195454, decreased by 3.88% over last year; while buyer quality is steadily on the rise.

Xu introduced that buyer attendance showed several characteristics.

Buyer attendance from “Belt and Road” countries shows a stable and positive trend. The number of buyers from “Belt and Road” countries account for 45.03% of the total, increased by 0.5 percentage point year-on-year. New buyers from countries along the “Belt and Road” accounted for 52.68% of the total number of new buyers, up by 0.94 percentage point year-on-year. Buyer attendance from ASEAN showed a sound growth of 4.79%, with Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore and Cambodia increased by 10.75%, 9.08%, 23.71%, 4.4% and 8.83% respectively. BRICS buyer attendance has a better performance than the overall level, with its decrease margin 1.47 percentage points lower than the average; Brazil increased by 4.01% and Russia increased by 1.29%.

Buyer attendance of the main buyer origin countries stays stable. Buyer attendance from China’s top 10 trading partner countries and regions in 2018 accounted for 64% of the total, 2.56 percentage points higher over the same period of last year. The top 20 buyer origins contributed 61.44% of the total attendance, with South Korea, Thailand, Russia, Malaysia, Japan, Vietnam, Brazil and Bangladesh showing considerable growth.

Important buyers maintain active attendance. More than 100 of the world's top 250 retail companies have attended, with 5 of the top 10 retailers. Multinational corporations sent more buyers to source and over 1287 companies sent over 5 buyers. 80% of buyers have decision making power or take part in decision making. Canton Fair Overseas VIP Lounge receives nearly 10000 important buyers, up by 4.7% over the last session. More than 47,000 buyers have attended the event more than 10 times. Key chambers of commerce and industrial organizations from the US, Russia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan attended the fair the first time.

New buyers continue to increase. The new buyer attendance totals 82,375, accounting for 42.15% of the total number, a higher proportion than that of the previous two sessions. This indicates Canton Fair’s promotion has yielded pragmatic results.

Buyer market is expected to be stable. According to the survey, more than 83% of buyers will maintain or increase their sourcing in China in the coming year.

 (Canton Fair Press Center)