Coastal Ports News
- Specialty berths in the works
Date: 25-Jan-2007 Sources: (Xinhua Online)
China will build more dedicated seaport berths for coal, oil, ore and container transport this year in a bid to encourage further specialization of the country's transportation industry.
Minister of Communications Li Shenglin told a recent national working conference that the handling capacity of China's harbors ranked No 1 in the world for a fourth consecutive year last year.
The country's harbors, both inland and coastal, handled up to 5.6 billion tons of cargo last year, an increase of 15.4 percent from the year before.
The number of containers handled increased by 26 percent over the 2005 figure to 93 million containers.
Shanghai continues to be the world's largest harbor in terms of cargo-handling capacity.
China has 12 ports that can handle at least 100 million tons of freight a year since Rizhao in Shandong Province and Nantong in Jiangsu Province entered the category last year.
Long way to go
However, despite these gains, experts said it would take China one or two decades to solve its transport problems.
To improve China's competitiveness in the global shipping industry, the State Council approved a coordinated seaport plan in August. The plan calls for each harbor and provincial body to conform to a centralized layout.
The plan divided 150-odd ports into five groups. It also categorized the ports by function, with the goal of establishing specialized transportation networks for coal, petroleum, ore, container, food, passengers and vehicle commodities as well as roll-on/roll-off transportation like car ferries between the mainland and its islands.
The ministry will build container berths at Shanghai's Yangshan Port and Tianjin Port under the plan. It will also build wharfs capable of handling 300,000 tons of oil per year at the Tianjin and Qingdao ports this year.
Altogether, 252 new berths are to be completed, 144 of which will be deep-water berths that can accommodate 10,000-ton vessels. By 2010, China's coastal harbors are expected to handle at least 4.5 billion tons of cargo.
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