China is going to set policies to release the pressure of the shipping freight cost. The freight cost has increased rapidly during the last few months. The containers are in a significant shortage globally and push the freight into rocket high, especially in China.
China’s economy bounced back much faster due to the excellent control over the virus within its borders by the second quarter of 2020. As the economy bounced back, the need for containers boomed up. Because of the pandemic in the first quarter, many orders canceled due to the first half-year worldwide lockdown. In this situation, the logistic industry reduced the shipping schedule and container storage. At that point, the growing-up demands of containers are much higher than the expectation in the second half-year.
Some good news for China’s freight is that some Chinese government departments try to set some policies or agreements to restrain the freight increasing.
Local policies-
Due to the lack of empty containers, the Ningbo Zhoushan Port sets policies to reduce the empty container’s fee to stay in the border.
Ningbo Government also sets policies to encourage the local container manufactory to expand their production volume.
National policies-
General Administration of Customs, the Ministry of Finance
In a conference for promoting cross-border trade facilitation in 2021 launched on the 19th January, the General Administration of Customs, the Ministry of Finance, and other ministries and commissions jointly launched the promotion of international container liner companies and container production Enterprises to further increase the launch capacity of ships, in response to the current container ship transport capacity and empty container tensions.
In the government’s conference meeting, the aim is to expand container production capacity and route capacity. Secondly, increase international liner and container supply capacity and reduce enterprise cross-border transportation costs.
The Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Transport
The Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Transport will set some actions.
1. increase shipping capacity
2. stabilize freight rates
3. solve the lack of containers.
As we can see that the Chinese government starts to set some policies or begin to figure out the logistics problems, there is a high possibility that the freight cost may become more stable after the Chinese New Year.
