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Rudong county in Nantong, East China's Jiangsu province, has been promoting the steady development and high-quality growth of foreign trade since the beginning of this year, with various indicators performing steadily in the first quarter.

Official statistics show that Rudong achieved a total import and export value of 15.42 billion yuan ($2.22 billion) in the first quarter.

Rudong Customs reported that in the first three months, the import value of the county's ports amounted to 10.79 billion yuan, with LNG being the main component of its import trade.

From January to March, the PetroChina Jiangsu LNG terminal received 19 LNG ships, with an import value of about 9.194 billion yuan.

In addition, large-scale projects became a new driving force of the county's foreign trade by introducing international advanced equipment and importing raw materials for production.  

For example, the first phase of a facility by Jiangsu Jiaotong Energy Co Ltd settled in the Yangkou Lingang Industrial Park with a total investment of more than 24 billion yuan.

The project is expected to produce 5 million metric tons of pure terephthalic acid and 2.4 million tons of new functional fibers.

In the first quarter of this year, the total import value of equipment and raw materials for this project was about 590 million yuan, while the total exports of products reached 44.3 million yuan.

BASF Crop Protection (Jiangsu) Co Ltd established the first wholly-owned production factory in the Asia-Pacific region. It was invested by BASF SE, a chemical producer.

In the first three months, the company has introduced advanced equipment worth 638 million yuan to boost technical transformation.