BEIJING: China’s crude oil imports in June jumped 45.3 percent on the year to record the second-highest monthly figure on record, customs data showed on Thursday, with refiners building up inventories despite tepid domestic demand, according to Reuters. Crude imports in June totalled 52.06 million tons, or 12.67 million barrels per day, the data from the General Administration of Customs showed. It was a substantial increase on the 8.72 million bpd imported in June last year, when the economy was battered by widespread COVID-19 lockdowns. Crude imports also held their upward momentum on a month-on-month basis, up 4.58 percent from May’s 12.11 million bpd. Total imports for the first half were 282.07 million metric tons, up 11.7 percent from 252.52 million in the corresponding period last year. Conversely, China’s exports contracted last month at their fastest pace since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, as an ailing global economy puts mounting pressure on Chinese policymakers for fresh stimulus measures. Momentum in China’s post-pandemic recovery has slowed after a brisk pickup in the first quarter, with analysts now downgrading their projections for the economy for the rest of the year as factory output slows in the face of persistently weak global demand. Outbound shipments from the world’s second-largest economy slumped by a worse-than-expected 12.4 percent year-on-year in June, data from China’s Customs Bureau showed on Thursday, following a drop of 7.5 percent in May. Imports contracted 6.8 percent, steeper than an expected 4.0 percent decline and the previous month’s 4.5 percent fall. “The global downturn in goods demand will continue to weigh on exports,” said Zichun Huang, China economist at Capital Economics, with a further decline in exports seen likely before they bottom out toward the end of the year. “But the good news is that the worst of the decline in foreign demand is probably already behind us,” she added. Lv Daliang, a spokesperson for the General Administration of Customs, blamed the poor export performance on “a weak global economic recovery, slowing global trade and investment, and rising unilateralism, protectionism and geopolitics,” in comments at a news conference in Beijing. Exports to the US — the top destination for Chinese goods — have fallen the most among its major trading partners over the first half of the year, as diplomatic tensions mount over chip technology and other issues, while exports to Russia have risen sharply, although from a modest level.