BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s imports from Russia rose 10% on the year in January-February to 12.65 million metric tons, data from the General Administration of Customs showed on Thursday, despite persistent rail bottlenecks and Western sanctions.
Sanctions are pushing up the costs of mining in Russia by reducing investment and equipment upgrades and increasing personnel costs, analysts at Guosheng Securities said in a note.
Coal imports from China’s largest supplier Indonesia increased 7% year-on-year to 34.63 million tons during the two months but could fall back in the coming months, after Indonesia started using its government-set benchmark coal price as the floor price for transactions as of March 1.
Traders have criticised the new policy, saying they would prefer to continue using the prevailing ICI index because of lags in the government index, and that buyers have been holding off on signing new deals.
Last year, China’s imports of Russian coal slipped 7%, while purchases from all other key suppliers rose, pushing total imports to an all-time high of 547.2 million tons in 2024.
Below are the details of imports from key suppliers with volume in metric tons:
Country Feb 2025 Year-on-year YTD Year-on-ye
% change ar %
change
Indonesia 15,272,929 -8% 34,626,480 7%
Russia 6,306,088 3% 12,648,832 10%
Australia 4,376,226 -13% 12,047,812 12%
Mongolia 5,147,823 17% 10,682,560 5%
(Reporting by Colleen Howe; editing by David Evans)
