China's trade balance turned red in March, the country's first monthly trade deficit in six years, the General Administration of Customs said Saturday.

China exports were valued at US$112.11 billion in March, up 24.3 percent year on year, while the imports surged 66 percent to US$119.35 billion, resulting in a deficit of US$7.24 billion.

The deficit was China's first since it posted a 2.26 billion deficit in April 2004, according to a report released by the GAC.

China's total foreign trade rose 42.8 percent year on year to US$231.46 billion in March, according to Customs statistics.

In the first quarter, foreign trade rose 44.1 percent to US$617.85 billion, with a surplus of US$14.49 billion though it was down 76.7 percent from the same period of last year.

The country's trade surplus hit US$23.7 billion in February.

Li Jian, a research fellow with the Research Institute under the Ministry of Commerce, said China's trade surplus had been falling since the start of the year.

"The deficit in March was just an extension of this trend," Li said.

He said China did not purposefully pursue a trade surplus and had adopted a policy of encouraging imports and achieving a trade balance over the years.

As the economy improved, any shift in people's expectations towards macro economic policies on liquidity and investment would influence importers' decisions and imported commodity prices, he said.

"Externally, we need to prudently monitor the world economy to avoid risk of a double-dip recession," he said. "Domestically, we need to focus on economic restructuring and transformation of economic growth pattern based on the stable growth of foreign trade."

The GAC attributed the March deficit to shrinking exports of labor-intensive products, surging imports and rising commodity prices.

"The deficit in March is neither a recession, nor can it be sustained," the GAC said in its report, adding the deficit was small and China had maintained a "basic balance" between imports and exports.