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A spokesman for China's National Bureau of Statistics refuted reports that slow growth of imports from January to February was caused by weak domestic demand, Wednesday's Economic Information Daily reported.

The report said China's imports reached 84.18 billion US dollarsin the first two months, an increase of 8.3 percent over the same period from the previous year.

However, the import growth rate was down 33.7 percent from the same period last year. The figure is also a decrease of 27.3 percent compared with October-December period of 2004, it said.

The spokesman Zheng Jinping attributed China's declining importsto the decrease of investment in fixed assets in the wake of pricehikes of raw materials and the adjustment of the country's tariff on imported cars.

In the first two months of this year, China's investment in fixed assets increased only 24.5 percent, compared with 53 percentin the same period of last year, Zheng said.

Zheng said that China's imports of iron ore increased by 38.2 percent during the period, down 192.3 percent over the same perioda year earlier. The import growth of crude oil was down 35.9 percentage points, while the imports of iron and steel declined by7 percent compared with a 30 percent increase during the same period of the previous year, Zheng was quoted as saying.

He noted that the adjustment of tariff on imported cars resultedin a 55.3 percent decrease in imports in the first two months of 2005, compared with an increase of 27.7 percent in the corresponding period of 2004.

China's imports of soybean also dropped by 29.8 percent in January-February this year compared with a growth rate of 164.3 percent in the same period a year earlier, Zheng said.

Song Guoqing, professor of the Economic Research Center of Beijing University, believed that the stockpiles of crude oil, copper and other raw materials due to huge imports last year led to the declining imports this year.

Meanwhile, Zhang Feng, a senior economist at the State Information Center, held that China will maintain a steady growth in imports due to strong domestic demand. Besides, China's admission to the World Trade Organization is also a favorable factor for imports growth as the country will further lower its tariffs, he said.