JINAN – East China’s Shandong Province saw robust growth in its foreign trade with countries and regions along the Belt and Road in 2021, local authorities said.

The trade rose by 40.8 percent year on year to about 937.6 billion yuan (around 147.6 billion U.S. dollars) last year, accounting for 32 percent of the province’s total foreign trade, according to Qingdao Customs.

Shandong’s exports and imports with countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) maintained an annual increase of 39.7 percent and 42.2 percent respectively in 2021.

Of the total, the energy and agricultural sectors are more closely linked between the two sides. In 2021, Shandong imported about 175 billion yuan of crude oil from countries along the Belt and Road, up 51.5 percent, and the imports of agricultural products increased 19.5 percent to more than 26 billion yuan.

From 2013 to 2021, the province saw its trade with BRI nations grow by an annual average of 11.1 percent.

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