China will further reduce import tariffs on energy, raw materials and advanced technology in a bid to ease the country's growing trade surplus, Fu Ziying, assistant minister of commerce, said over the weekend.

The rapidly expanding trade surplus is "threatening the economy with the danger of rebounding investment and rising inflation," Fu said at an economic conference in Beijing.
China aims to narrow the surplus, which jumped 74 percent to a record US$177.5 billion last year, in an effort to adjust economic structure and curb rapid foreign exchange inflow that floods the world's fourth-largest economy with liquidity and adds pressure on its currency to rise.

China's exports rose 27 percent, and imports gained 20 percent in 2006, according to government data cited by Bloomberg News. To slow exports, China raised export taxes on oil, steel and nonferrous metals in November. In the same month, it cut import tariffs for alumina, the raw material for aluminum.

In September, it cut export incentives for steel and textiles.

The commerce ministry will further cut export rebates, Fu said, without elaborating. It will also adjust toll policies on companies that import raw materials and then export processed products, he added, without providing further details.

A more flexible currency is helping the government's effort to ease the trade surplus, Fu said. The yuan rose 0.31 percent to 7.7739 against the United States dollar in Shanghai last week, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trade System. It has risen 6.3 percent since a fixed exchange rate of 8.28 to the dollar ended in July 2005.

The government has asked the Export and Import Bank of China, a state-owned policy lender, to increase lending to importers, Liang Xiang, assistant president of the bank, told reporters on Saturday.