Freight trains boost trade across border

China-Vietnam service has carried over 594,000 metric tons of cargo

A freight train service between China and Vietnam has boosted the rapid movement of cargo between the two countries and further into Southeast Asia, the service provider, China Railway Nanning Group, said.

On Nov 30, a train carrying nearly 300 metric tons of cargo, including PVC, automotive parts and diesel engines, left Nanning International Railway Port in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. It arrived in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, the next day, the group said, with the trip taking about 15 hours.

As of last month, more than 1,000 such trains had carried 594,500 tons of goods between the two countries since the launch of the China-Vietnam freight train service in November 2017.

In those six years, travel time has been reduced. The group said it initially took more than 20 hours to travel from Nanning to Hanoi, but that has now been reduced to 14 and a half hours.

Service quality has also been improved, thanks to more efficient customs clearance and preferential pricing offers.

Yang Dakun, who works at one of the group's cargo transport centers, said products carried by the trains now came from more than 20 cities in six Chinese provinces, including Sichuan, Guizhou and Zhejiang.

"The variety of goods has expanded from 205 to over 620 types, including industrial machinery, technology products, and regional specialties," he said. "Cross-border transportation now extends to countries such as Laos, Thailand and Vietnam."

Zhou Qishou, deputy director of the group's Nanning Freight Center, said the railway department has operated a fast service since the end of June that has reduced the time it takes to complete customs clearance procedures. Such train services now operate three times a week on a regular basis to meet demand for cross-border cargo transport.

In the first 11 months of this year, the railway station in Pingxiang, the Chinese city that sits on the border, handled 312,000 tons of cross-border cargo.

Exports of Chinese PVC products on the China-Vietnam freight train increased in the second half of this year, and the group's railway department implemented tailored plans to improve loading, unloading and filing of customs declarations to improve efficiency.

Zhang Xia, a manager at Guangxi Fantai International Logistics, said: "The railway department has developed a transportation plan to use the 40-foot-size box to transport PVC. Each box contains 35 tons of cargo, effectively improving the capacity of cross-border chemical product transportation. It is not only reducing transportation costs, but also improving efficiency."