Staff members of Baotou customs check imported equipment parts. [Photo/baotounews.com.cn]

Baotou in North China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region ranked 59th among the country’s top 100 cities for foreign trade, according to a list recently released by China Customs, an influential magazine sponsored by China's General Administration of Customs.

The selection criteria of the list included 25 indicators in five sub-items, local officials said.

These were the competitiveness of a city's foreign trade, its structural competitiveness, benefits competitiveness, development competitiveness and potential competitiveness.

Officials said that from these, the overall comprehensive foreign trade competitiveness scores of cities above prefecture level in China were calculated.

According to statistics released by Baotou customs, last year the total value of the city’s imports and exports was 19.07 billion yuan ($2.74 billion), an increase of 13.6 percent over the previous year and setting a record.

The figure accounted for 17.4 percent of the total foreign trade in Inner Mongolia, ranking Baotou second among the leagues and cities of the autonomous region.

In 2019, Baotou’s exports came in at 9.79 billion yuan, down 1.2 percent year-on-year. But imports surged to 9.28 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth of 35.1 percent.