The structure of China's pesticide import & export starting to change

China’s pesticide import & export market has for many years maintained the tendency of more export than import. Half of the home-made pesticide are exported which are mainly pesticide technical including the dominant glyphosate while import are mostly formulations. However according to the import & export statistics from January to September 2013 as published by the Institute for the Control of Agrochemicals, Ministry of Agriculture (ICAMA), China’s pesticide import & export have started to change in respect of formulation, variety and territory of trade in the following manners:

Growth of Export Apparently Slowing Down

From January to September 2013 pesticide export volume was up by 5.4% to around 1.28 million tons with export value rising 13.7% to US$6.5 billion year on year. Pesticide import volume increased by 12.3% to 47,131 tons with import value up by 15.5% at US$535 million. Compared with the two-digit increase last year, the pesticide import & export growth from January to September this year has slowed down, especially the export growth, which has slowed down from the 13.55% down to 5.4% year over year.

A Breakthrough in Formulations Export

The structure of export pesticide from January to September 2013 has changed both in respect of pesticide technical and formulations. The pesticide technical export volume from January to September 2013 has dropped by 11.64% while the increase of value has remained stable being 4.95%. A breakthrough has been achieved in formulations export, with the proportion of formulation export having increased up to 40.73% from the 35.81% of same period of last year.

Year	Expt. & Impt	technical /formulation	volume（000 tons）	% change	Per cent	$ million	% change	Per cent
2011(1-9)	Expt	Technical	486.67		45.64	2829.25		61.94
2011(1-9)	Expt	Formulations	579.766		54.36	1738.26		38.06
2012(1-9)	Expt	Technical	554.471	+13.93	45.79	3693.31	+30.54	64.19
2012(1-9)	Expt	Formulations	656.443	+13.23	54.21	2059.98	+18.51	35.81
2013(1-9)	Expt	Technical	489.958	-11.64	38.37	3876.26	+4.95	59.27
2013(1-9)	Expt	Formulations	786.817	+19.86	61.63	2664.13	+29.33	40.73

Export Variety Has Changed

The pesticide active ingredient export volume from January to September 2013 reveals glyphosate to be No.1 with its growth of 31.20%. while Imidacloprid and methomyl have fallen out of the top 10. It is worthy of note that dichlorobenzene has risen to be No.10 with its export volume of 19,777 tons; if judging by export value, the 2,4-D which ranked No. 7 in 2012 with its export value of around US$150 million has fallen out of the top 10 this year, replaced by fipronil which has ranked No.9 with its export value of some US$93 million.

Rank	2012			2013（1-9）
	ai	$ million	% change	ai	$ million	% change
1	glyphosate	1427.32	+65.50	glyphosate	1590.42	+73.96
2	imidacloprid	360.17	+50.89	paraquat	313.17	+20.71
3	paraquat	334.47	+12.06	imidacloprid	300.89	+11.43
4	glyphosate-isopropylammonium	302.17	+13.05	glyphosate-isopropylammonium	290.66	+20.49
5	atrazine	192.06	+37.39	atrazine	155.98	+22.72
6	chlorpyrifos	162.86	+22.02	acephate	125.4	+31.75
7	2,4-D	149.78	+109.89	chlorpyrifos	118.32	-1.19
8	acephate	122.4	+65.36	methomyl	116.07	+46.74
9	methomyl	113.22	+91.48	fipronil	92.94	+94.03
10	carbendazim	109.39	-30.38	carbendazim	86.96	-3.51

Export to South America Has Grown Significantly

The pesticide export market from January to September 2013 is still concentrated on Asia, South America and Africa, of which South America enjoys a high growth where export volume has risen from the 283,926 tons last year to the 316,161 tons this year, which is 11.4% up year on year, with export value rising by 21.16% to around US$1.79 billion.

Rank	2012			2013
	country	Volume（000 tons）	%change	country	Volume（000 tons）	%change
1	US	157.316	48.83%	US	129.701	23.47
2	Brazil	105.224	48.06%	Brazil	110.8	45.44%
3	Argentina	108.454	23.08%	Thailand	95.831	-4.66%
4	Australia	85.705	5.46%	Argentina	67.923	-9.12%
5	Thailand	119.338	11.91%	Nigeria	63.595	16.99%
6	Israel	33.413	33.43%	Vietnam	60.201	-0.40%
7	India	34.287	-17.59%	Indonesia	59.402	17.00%
8	Vietnam	78.434	19.10%	Australia	47.84	-14.02%
9	Indonesia	68.062	15.70%	Ghana	34.912	-22.68%
10	Nigeria	73.692	11.55%	Malaysia	34.684	11.09%
11	South Africa	28.869	-6.32%	India	30.851	4.52%
12	Russian Federation	26.128	10.84%	Russian Federation	30.317	42.51%
13	Ukraine	35.181	16.84%	South Africa	24.415	7.14%
14	Pakistan	23.336	-19.40%	Pakistan	23.937	14.68%
15	Columbia	25.143	11.87%	Ukraine	23.602	-18.51%
16	Belgium	13.743	12.88%	Columbia	22.679	17.04%
17	Malaysia	39.347	15.54%	Japan	22.273	-19.58%
18	Japan	32342	-15.65%	Israel	19.484	-25.60%
19	Paraguay	18.427	17.82%	Philippines	19.113	25.59%
20	Ghana	52.869	-16.31%	Chile	16.445	23.23%

Note: the above information is for reference only, as there might be inconsistencies between statistics of the Statistics Department, ICAMA and Customs Authority resulting from the use of different statistical criteria.