Fangchenggang Port on Beibu Gulf to Have More BerthsFangchenggang, a port city on Beibu Gulf in south China, has planned to build three large berths and one deep-water channel during the Tenth Five-Year-Plan period (2001-2005).The three new berths will include one berth with a handling capacity of 150,000 dead weight tonnages (DWT) and the berth will be a specialized outlet for minerals, said Xu Wenyan, Party Secretary of the city, which falls under the jurisdiction of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. According to Xu, two existing channels will be dredged in the next five years. Pre-stage construction with two of the three planned new berths has been carried out smoothly and is expected to be completed and put into service within two years, said Xu. Fangchenggang has 27 berths with a combined handling capacity of 11 million DWT and is the largest port city in west China which refers to the autonomous regions of Tibet, Xinjiang, Ningxia, Guangxi and Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Gansu, Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou provinces and Chongqing Municipality. By 2005, the combined handling capacity will be expanded to 20 million DWT. The Party secretary pledged that they would work harder to improve equipment, facilities and environment, and services at Fangchenggang Port to meet the need of foreign trade and make the port play a bigger role in the country's drive to develop the west regions. The port handled 9.22 million tons of cargo last year, up 14.2 percent from 1999. |
| People's Daily Online --- http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/ |