Commercial Radio Hong Kong:

Guangdong province saw a COVID-19 outbreak in May and June, and commodity prices continued to rise. What impacts did the two factors have on China's exports in the second quarter, especially in June? Thank you.

Li Kuiwen:

Thanks for your question. In late May, COVID-19 hit Guangzhou and Shenzhen, causing congestion in some ports. Feedback shows that the port congestion had a certain impact on deliveries and taking deliveries by some enterprises, and the freight rates of relevant air routes fluctuated to some extent. As the epidemic prevention and control situation improves in the relevant regions, port capacity is also gradually recovering. On June 24, the overall operations in Yantian Port had fully resumed, and other ports are also resuming their full operations.

The GACC acted rapidly to reduce congestion in some ports. By strictly enforcing epidemic prevention and control measures and guaranteeing the clearance efficiency of imports and exports, GACC mobilizes personnel to ensure frontline supervision. For instance, Shenzhen customs has taken a series of measures to improve clearance efficiency, reduce congestion, and relieve operating pressure through innovations in logistics modes, speeding up the allocation of ships and containers between ports, optimizing examination modes, extending time limits for advance declarations, and flexibly using integrated customs clearance. Guangzhou customs, together with other local departments, has activated emergency plans to promote interconnection between ports in its jurisdiction, enhancing clearance time limit monitoring, optimizing regulatory resources, and speeding up examination and regulatory work to accelerate goods clearance. Now, at the main ports of southern China, the whole export clearance process by sea can be completed in one hour on average. There is no backlog due to customs supervision.

Next, customs will continue to improve the port business environment, and work hard to implement epidemic prevention and control measures and offer security clearance services. Thanks.