China's Busy Port Traffic Points to Strong Economic Recovery

The third and fourth quarters are normally peak seasons for Chinese ports. This year, though, the busy season started in the first quarter, suggesting the nation's robust economic recovery is continuing.

"We have been quite busy in the last two or three months," said Guan Hui, who is in charge of unloading at Qiangang Company, a unit of Qingdao Port Corporation, as he supervised the discharge of 240,000 tonnes of iron ores from a bulk carrier while, just offshore, another three iron ore-laden ships waited for their turn to unload.

The scene at the ports this year is different from last year when China's foreign trade slumped as the global economic recession dragged the country' s economic growth down to a decade low of 6.1 percent.

In the first quarter this year, Qingdao Port, China's biggest port for crude oil and iron ores, recorded year-on-year 8.1 percent growth in throughput in the first quarter with 84.79 million tonnes. Container throughput was up 8.9 percent to 2.72 million twenty-foot equivalent units.

That growth brought delight to Qingdao Qianwan Container Terminal, whose three docks are for foreign trade by container -- but the brisk business conditions have brought their own challenges.

"In the first quarter of last year, foreign trade was quite slack. Most of the throughput was empty containers from imports," company official Guan Qian said.

"The company took great pains to find room to place these containers with about 160,000 empty ones at dock at peak time last year while in total there was more than 700,000 in the whole year," Guan said.

During the first quarter of the year, total throughput at Qianwan dock exceeded 2.7 million twenty-foot equivalent units, up 10 percent from a year ago.

"The biggest change is that 96 percent of exported and imported containers are full of goods," Guan said.

"There are fewer empty ones and more full ones, meaning the recovery of import and export is real," Guan said, adding the company now faces a shortage of empty containers as out of the 100,000 containers at dock, the number of empty ones is now below 30,000.

At another important Chinese port, Ningbo, which is located on east China coast in the economically developed Zhejiang Province, business is also brisk, with total throughput up 28 percent year on year in the first quarter and container throughput up 26.2 percent.

Wang Jianlong, a long-distance truck driver who transports goods five days a week between Ningbo Port and Shaoxing, Yiwu, two other cities in Zhejiang, is busy.

"Now, we truckers have to get in line 7 or 8 hours in advance to scramble for containers. And I did not even get a break during the Spring Festival," he says.

"Now I am able to earn an extra 1,000 yuan (146.5 U.S. dollars) a month," he adds.

In the first quarter of last year, the company which Wang works for ran at only one-third capacity as the global downturn accelerated, said Shi Libo, head of the company's control center. "This year we have added more than 50 trucks, but we are still under pressure."

He Jianzhong, a Ministry of Transport spokesman, told Xinhua port cargo throughput and foreign trade cargo throughput rose more than 20 percent year on year in the first quarter, indicating strong domestic demand and accelerated economic growth.

Government data shows that the first quarter saw robust throughput of commodities like iron ores, coal and crude oil, boosted by growing domestic demand which came on the back of rapid growth in fixed-asset investment, rising power generation and booming auto sales.

Some 173 million tonnes of iron ore imports were moved at Chinese ports in the first quarter, up 16 percent from a year earlier, according to government statistics. Unloaded imports of crude oil at Chinese ports, meanwhile, rose 30 percent to 48.42 million tonnes.

Customs authorities said Saturday China's exports rose 24.3 percent in March to 112.1 billion dollars from the same month a year earlier, while imports soared 66 percent year-on-year to 119.3 billion dollars. In the first quarter, foreign trade rose 44.1 percent to 617.85 billion U.S. dollars.

However, Huang Weiping, secretary of the board of directors of Ningbo Port Co., said the strong growth in the first quarter was due to the low base, with actual throughput not having increased from the pre-crisis levels of 2008.

"We can't be blindly optimistic about the current situation as the domestic and international economic environment are still complicated," he said.

The central government has repeatedly warned of the economic uncertainties both at home and abroad and announced in March it will target 8 percent economic growth in 2010, the year described by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in early March as "a crucial but complicated year for China's economic development."