CHINA PLANS DEVELOPMENT OF COASTAL HUBS, WATERWAYS
Mainland China is planning considerable investments in container ports to keep up with the country’s export and import boom, increasingly by involving private-sector investor in joint ventures.
Quan Peitao, vice chairman of the Technical Committee for Material Handling Institute at the Chinese Ministry of Communications, told the Terminal Operations Conference in Portugal, that Chinese container port volumes would rise from 25 million TEUs in 2000 to 40 million TEUs in 2005 and 60 million TEUs in 2010.
Peitao referred to the increasing number of public/private container terminal joint ventures in China behind the recent developments in the ports of Dalian, Qingdao, Shekou, Dongfang, Shanghai and Yantian.
“China is a developing country,” he said. “To accelerate the port construction, it needs to raise the funds in every way to make up for the shortage of domestic capital.”
“The admission of China … to the World Trade Organization this year will bring opportunities and challenges to the future development of China’s economy,” the official said. Total imports and exports are forecast to grow from $470 billion last year to $680 billion in 2005, he said.
In the next five years, China will focus on the construction of coastal hub ports and the management of inland waterways, develop water transport and build international shipping centers, he added.
The World Bank is financing waterway projects in the country.
A new deep-water port in Shanghai is under development, with three large facilities planned to provide at least another six million TEUs in annual port handling capacity.