General Administration of Customs spokesman Huang Songping at a press conference on Monday, April 13, 2015. [Photo: China.org.cn]

Official data came out earlier today showing that China's foreign trade volume dipped by 6% in the first quarter of 2015.

The lackluster performance was partly dragged due to a 14.6 percent export slump in March.

Last month, China's foreign trade volume dropped by 13.5 percent from a year earlier, following an 11.3-percent increase in February.

General Administration of Customs spokesman Huang Songping says the decline is mainly due to a sluggish global economic recovery.

"First, demand from the global market is down and export orders declined. According to our survey on 3,000 Chinese export companies, about 44% of them have shown export orders fell significantly since last October. In March, the proportion has risen to 47.3%, even worse than the previous level."

Other than this, Huang says that domestic downward pressure is also accounted for in these figures.

China has lowered its annual target for foreign trade growth to around 6 percent for 2015, from the 7.5-percent goal set for 2014.

But Huang Songping pointed out that the implementation of newly approved Free Trade Zones and the 'Belt and Road' initiative can be favorable factors to promote foreign trade.

"Preliminary calculation shows, China's foreign trade volume with countries along the routes of belt and road initiative in the first quarter was estimated at some 1450 billion yuan, accounting for a quarter of China's total foreign trade in the same period, up 10 percent."

There are continued worries over foreign trade volume falling short of the target again for the fourth consecutive year.