Henan to transform into national transport and logistics hub

Shu Qing, vice-governor of Henan, has vowed to transform Henan into a national transport and logistics hub, in order to take advantage of the Belt and Road Initiative and free trade zone policies. He made these comments during a press conference in Beijing on Friday.

"The Henan Free Trade Zone, one of the recently launched seven new free trade zones, undertakes the mission to build a traffic and logistics network, which link up the north and south while connecting the east and west," he said.

"It also serves as a modern comprehensive transportation hub, serving the Belt and Road Initiative."

Shu said he saw Henan's import-export volume with countries, and regions, participating in the Belt and Road Initiative during 2016, which reached 80.2 billion yuan ($11.60 billion), with a year-on-year increase of 15.4 percent.

The Zhengzhou-Europe railway, which launched 251 cargo trains in 2016, also exceeded the annual plan of 200, and had a total cargo volume reaching $1.2 billion.

Since being launched in 2013, the Zhengzhou-Europe Train finished 556 one-way trips by March, 2017, and delivered cargo amounting to the total value of $2.82 billion, according to Zhengzhou's bureau of commerce.

It would also take 300 Zhengzhou-Europe trains to complete the 10,214-kilometer trip in 2017 alone.

Shu added, during the press conference on Friday, Henan should take advantage of the free trade zone policies to upgrade the province's modern logistics sector, as well as the high-end manufacturing sector, while boosting business in cross border e-commerce, and transit, processing, service and offshore trades.

"The province had 29 international airfreight lines in 2016, and delivered 450,000 metric tons of cargo," he said.