As a historical port city for foreign trade, Ningbo had become one of the three ports for foreign trade in China as early as the 7th century. In 2002, the self-oriented import and export trade volume of Ningbo amounted to 12.273 billion US dollars, increasing by 30.70% as compared with 2001.The growth rate of exports stayed middling in China. In 2002, the actual foreign capital utilized in Ningbo reached 1.247 billion US dollars, increasing by 43% over the precious year. All these achievements have laid a solid foundation for further development of Ningbo's export-oriented economy.

Foreign Trade -- In 2002, the city's total import and export value was USD 12.273 billion, up 38.04% from the previous year. In a breakdown, the export value was USD 8.163 billion, up 30.73% from the previous year, and import value was USD 4.11 billion, up 55.28% from the previous year.

Foreign Investment -- There were 10.17 foreign funded enterprises having been approved in 2002 with a contractual foreign capital of 3200 million US dollars. The actual utilization of foreign capital achieved 1247 million US dollars. By the end of 2002, a sum of 6863 foreign funded enterprises had been approved accumulatively, with total investment up to 21.37 billion US dollars, of which the contractual foreign capital took up 10.409 billion US dollars and the actual utilization of foreign capital reached 6.13 billion US dollars.

Foreign Economic Cooperation -- The turnover of foreign engineering and labor cooperation in 2002 reached 302 million US dollars, grew 4.9% over 2001. The total has been up to 11000 persons by the end of 2002. 72 foreign business offices have been set up with approval in Ningbo and 60 overseas enterprises have been set up abroad.