According to the statistics released by China's General Administration of Customs, China's coal imports in August totaled 11.77 million mt, a slip of 15 percent compared with the July level of 13.89 million mt, but still constituting the third highest monthly historical figure for coal imports.
The country's monthly coal imports have been above 10 million mt over the past three months. In June-September this year, China's total coal imports amounted to 41.73 million mt, exceeding the import volume of 40.4 million mt for the whole of 2008.
In the first eight months of 2009, China's coal imports totaled more than 75 million mt, five times its export volume of coal in the same period. Thus, if the current trend continues during the remaining four months of this year, China, which used to be the second largest coal exporter in the world six years ago, will become a net importer of coal for the first time this year.