Recently, Ningbo Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau has carried out the ninth survey on how much the export-oriented enterprises in Ningbo City were influenced by the foreign technical barriers to trade. Based on the statistics, 54.95% of the enterprises has in different degrees suffered from the foreign technical barriers to trade, which led to a direct loss of 2.477 billion USD and an increasing cost of 0.95 billion USD.

There were 555 export-oriented enterprises involved in this investigation, covering 7 industries—Agriculture & Food Products; Chemicals, Mining, and Metals ; Plastics & Rubber; Light Industrial Products & Toys; Paper, Woods and Non-Metallic; Electro-Mechanical Instruments; and Textile & Garment. Compared with the first survey, the average loss increases near 5% annually. In spite of the direct loss, the foreign technical barriers to trade has brought long-term disadvantages to the domestic products, for example, increasing costs, decreasing competitive capability, etc.

The foreign technical barrier to trade that brings a huge impact on the export include RoHs Instruction, REACH Regulation、ErP Instruction、CPSIA、Japan’s Positive List System, etc. All these barriers are the non-tariff barriers ranked only second to exchange rate. Around 35.2% export-oriented enterprises in China have been influenced by these barriers.

To better instruct the export-oriented enterprises, Ningbo Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau has established a release system, including a network for WTO Inspection and Quarantine,  a newest alert system for technical barrier to trade, an information notification of the abroad sub-quality products, and a project covering thousands of export-oriented enterprises. The Bureau as well carried out over 100 training courses for export-oriented enterprises to better get rid of the barriers.