JINAN, July 20 (Xinhua) -- East China's Shandong Province saw its foreign trade volume reaching 971.48 billion yuan (141.6 billion U.S. dollars) in the first half of the year, up 9.2 percent year on year, the provincial government has announced.

Shandong's total trade volume accounted for 6.6 percent of the national total in H1, in which its export volume grew to 527 billion yuan and its import volume rose to 444.5 billion yuan, said Zhao Fengjie, deputy head of the Jinan customs.

Latin America was the largest contributor to the province's strong performance in the first six months. Shandong's import and export volumes with the region totaled 130.9 billion yuan, up 14.3 percent, Zhao added.

Shandong also saw strong trade performance with the Belt and Road countries in H1 with the total trade volume surging to 278.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth of 20.2 percent.