BOAO, Hainan, April 23 (Xinhua) -- The seemingly stunning U.S. trade deficit has undercounted profit returns and intellectual exports, which are highly profitable but usually uncountable by the customs, China's former top statistician said here Sunday.

    If exactly calculated, the remarkable profits from surging outbound investment, exports of technologies, patent rights, cultural products, and many other forms of nonmaterial goods would have cut short the volume of the deficit, Li Deshui, ex-director of the National Bureau of Statistics, told Xinhua in an exclusive interview on the sideline of the on-going Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) annual meetings 2006.

    The United States has not suffered from a serious economic depression although it reported a trade deficit of 804.9 billion U.S. dollars in 2005, a huge jump from the 39.1 billion U.S. dollars in 1992, Li recalled.

    On the countrary, its overall economic growth stood at 3.6 percent last year, slightly higher than that of 1992, and the national unemployment rate dropped to 5.1 percent from 7.5 percent during the period, according to Li.

    The deficit failed to calculate the massive profit returns of overseas-based U.S. firms, Li noted, stressing that products shipped back to the motherland have been unreasonably considered as imports.

    Statistics from the United Nations show that overseas U.S. companies realized a combined sales volume of 3,383 billion U.S. dollars in 2004, more than three times of the exports from its home firms.

    A U.S. official report released in last March said that U.S. companies earned some 315 billion U.S. dollars from the overseas markets in 2003, up 26 percent year-on-year, and a large proportion of which had flown back to the home country.
In addition to the huge profit returns, the Chinese statistical expert also underscored the booming service trade such as the export of financial consultancy, and the rocketing sales of U.S. cultual products, technologies, patents, trade marks, and standards of various sectors.

    "It is impossible for the U.S. customs to register the amount of money if China purchases a movie from the United States," Li explained with an example.

    Moreover, Asian nations have bought a great deal of national bonds and other assets from the United States, which is another source of huge capital inflow that was undercounted.

    According to the International Monetary Fund, the U.S. deficit of the overall balance of payments was merely 1.5 billion U.S. dollars and 2.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2003 and 2004, respectively.

    Such a basically balanced situation could fully expain why the country has maintained rapid economic growth accompanied by huge trade deficit, said Li.

    U.S. trade deficit, along with some other global economic challenges like the soaring oil prices, has been widely viewed as risks that could undermine the world economy. Enditem