China will make port operations more efficient and hold more online trade fairs, among new measures to ease pressure on foreign trade, Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen said on Wednesday.

Export growth in the world's second largest economy slowed to single digits in April, the weakest in almost two years, while imports stayed flat as Covid-19 curbs halted factory production and crimped domestic demand.

Logistics efficiency has dropped, supply chains are not running smoothly and soaring raw material prices have put firms involved with international trade under pressure, Wang said at a press conference in Beijing.

"We must be clear about the uncertainties for foreign trade while the global economy recovery remains fragile and demand growth is still slow," Wang said, adding that rising global inflation will reduce consumer spending on foreign goods.

Premier Li Keqiang had warned that the challenges today are in some ways "greater than when the pandemic hit" in 2020, and the government has rolled out a series of measures to try and jump-start the economy.

Meanwhile, the World Bank has sharply slashed its annual growth forecast for China, warning in a report that Covid disruptions could further slow recovery.

Growth in China is projected to slow to 4.3 percent this year, the report said, marking a 0.8 percentage-point drop from the World Bank's December forecast.

"In the short term, China faces the dual challenge of balancing Covid-19 mitigation with supporting economic growth," the World Bank country director for China, Mongolia and Korea, Martin Raiser, said.

The World Bank also cut its global growth forecast to 2.9 percent, warning that the world economy risks falling into a harmful period of 1970s-style "stagflation" in the wake of the Russian attack on Ukraine. (Reuters/AFP)