Hohhot Customs introduced its achievements in serving foreign trade enterprises, strengthening reform and innovation, improving the customs clearance process, and promoting the overall port business environment at the news briefing in Inner Mongolia autonomous region on Dec 3.

To better serve foreign trade enterprises, Hohhot Customs issued 39 articles, which included measures to facilitate cross-border trade, 13 articles to improve clearance facilitation cooperation in airports, and 52 articles on cross-border trade facilitation reform and business environment promotion. Statistics showed that from January to October, the total foreign trade import and export value recorded at Hohhot Customs was 86.08 billion yuan ($13.5 billion), a year-on-year increase of 33.5 percent.

Customs investigated the 5,994 enterprises engaging in import and export trade in the region to learn about their requirements and established a long-term mechanism for customs clearance facilitation. In the first 10 months of this year, the overall customs clearance time for imports and exports was 40.95 hours and 35 minutes, which is a year-on-year reduction of 72.43 and 84.7 percent, respectively. The cargo volume of the ports under Hohhot Customs jurisdiction and supervision amounted to 26.44 million tons. Erenhot land port had 2,203 inbound and outbound China-Europe freight trains carrying 229,000 containers with a total cargo weight of 1.92 million metric tons and a value of $31.44 billion, which is a year-on-year increase of 12.86 percent, 16.09 percent, 3.52 percent and 42.37 percent, respectively.

The customs also continued to cut taxes and administrative fees to better implement its preferential taxation policies. By October, it had helped enterprises save customs clearance costs by more than 3 million yuan ($470,965). It also expanded imports and exports to support the development of characterized industries in the region. Efforts were also made to promote open platforms to further implement its opening-up strategy.