In this Feb 28, 2018 photo, Hong Kong's Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po talks at a press conference at Central Government Offices. (PARKER ZHENG / CHINA DAILY)

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s exports rebounded in September on the back of a recovering Chinese mainland economy, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said his blog post Sunday.

The city’s third-quarter gross domestic product should show a significant improvement from the two preceding three-month periods, said Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po

The city’s third-quarter gross domestic product should show a significant improvement from the two preceding three-month periods, Chan said.

The HKSAR’s GDP slumped by about nine percent in both the first and second quarters as the coronavirus outbreak forced most countries to go into some form of lockdown. 

The mainland, on which the HKSAR relies for half of its trade, posted 9.9 percent growth in exports and a 13.2 percent jump in imports last month, Chan said.

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Consumer consumption in the HKSAR is also recovering, with the city so far managing to keep the outbreak under control, and residents’ spending has increased, the financial secretary said. Economic pressure will ease further as the mainland recharges its economy, he said.

“In Hong Kong, the epidemic situation has been generally stable,” Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said in a separate post on the government website. 

“This has not only given us some breathing space, but also allowed us to take more precise control measures and resume more economic and social activities gradually while keeping the epidemic in check.”

READ MORE: Hong Kong's first quarter exports decline 9.7% year on year

The city’s jobless rate for the July-to-September period increased to 6.4 percent, a 16-year high, as the service industry virtually shut down because of the pandemic. The HKSAR government has released more than HK$300 billion (US$38.7 billion) in relief measures this year, Chan said.