East China's Zhejiang province will encourage its enterprises to import more advanced equipment this year to boost imports.

Wang Jie, spokesman for the Zhejiang Provincial Bureau of Statistics, said on Monday that enterprises in the province should buy advanced equipment abroad to boost both the province's sluggish imports performance and industrial upgrades.

"The decrease in Zhejiang's imports had become a problem since last year. It is partly due to the slow recovery of the global economy, and partly caused by the shrinking demand in our province," he said during a news conference held by the provincial government.

In the first quarter of this year, Zhejiang's imports dropped 6.8 percent year-on-year to $21 billion, according to the Zhejiang Provincial Bureau of Statistics. Last year, the province's imports decreased by 5.8 percent to $87.7 billion.

Wang said that the province is making efforts to encourage its enterprises to import advanced equipment since prices are now relatively low.

"It is a wonderful opportunity for enterprises to upgrade their equipment and gradually be less reliant on labor-intensive manufacturing. I believe we will see a better imports performance in the second half of this year," he said.

It is also hoped that new advanced equipment can further improve the province's export performance in the long term.

Exports grew by 11.7 percent to $52.9 billion in the first quarter, 5.6 percentage points higher than the same period of last year.

Though the performance is much better than last year's 3.8 percent increase, Wang said that exporters in Zhejiang should still be aware that the global economic situation is going to be complicated and weak for a long time.

In the first quarter, Zhejiang's economy grew at a stable rate. GDP grew by 8.3 percent year-on-year to 726.2 billion yuan ($117.5 billion). National GDP growth in the same period was 7.7 percent.