Spring Festival greetings in "wish trees"
- Details
- Category: Top News
- Published: Tuesday, 31 January 2012 10:18
In 2011, the throughput of cargo the Port of Ningbo handled reached 433 million tons, making historical new highs in successively five years. The annual handling capacity of containers reached 14.51 million standard containers, reaching the target specified in the general plan.
In the past 5 years, the Port of Ningbo has put greatest investment in infrastructures, resulting in notable increase in the comprehensive economic power and internal and international competitiveness.
In 2008, the Port of Ningbo started its strategy of turning itself into a powerful international port. In the year, the throughput of containers reached 10 million standard containers, becoming one of the 4 ports of China whose annual throughput reached 10 million containers.
From 2006 to 2011, the cargo-handling capacity of the port increased from 310 million tons to 430 million tons, and the throughput of containers increased from 7,060,000 to 14,510,000 standard containers. For the annual handling capacity of standard containers, the Port of Ningbo ranked No.3 in the ports of Mainland China and the No.6 in the world.
From 2007, the Port of Ningbo extended its business to the mainland building dry ports to expand its capacity of collecting goods in the mainland. So far, the dry ports in Jinhua, Yiwu, Shaoxing, Quzhou, Shangrao and Yingtan have been built and put in operation. In 2011, the port handled 218,000 standard containers from the dry ports, increased by 95% above the same period of the previous year.
In the meanwhile, the port further increased shipping lines. In 2011, the port had 236 shipping lines of containers, 73 more than the total in 2006. The monthly shipping service increased from 728 in 2006 to 1,300 in 2011. The port had its regular shipping services with over 600 ports of over 100 countries.
In the past five years, the investment in the infrastructural facilities has added up to over 10 billion yuan. On average, it has 2 to 3 berths built and put into operation. At present, it has 330 productive berths, including 80 deep-water berths for 10,000 tonnage ships. For this, the Port of Ningbo is a port in Mainland China that has the last number of large and super-large deepwater berths.
After paying new year's call to relatives and friends and staying at home due to the heavy snow, the citizens came out for shopping on the third day of the lunar month. Yesterday, all the shopping malls, supermarkets and specialized sales areas witnessed a busy atmosphere and a small sale peak came for such products as gold, winter clothing, food, tobacco, alcohol and electronic products.
The gold counter of Ningbo Second Department Store was surrounded by a number of customers inquiring about and trying on all kinds of jewelry, especially those dragon-shaped pendants and gold bars. According to a clerk, as people prefer to choose gold crafts as gifts and there are some discounts in price, the sale of gold jewelry has been going up and gold dragon decorations and pendants have been out of stock.
Large shopping malls launched the last round of effective discounts for winter clothing. Major shopping malls and department stores, such as Intime, Ningbo Second Department Store, New Hualian and Oriental Mall, launched such Spring Festival promotion activities as discounts, coupons, credits and lucky draws. The sale of winter clothing in these four stores increased by 5% over the same period last year, no less than that before the festival. "Today is the busiest day of the festival period, especially in the afternoon." said a cashier in the clothing counter in Intime. The most popular clothes are down jackets and cashmere sweaters. With a discounted down jacket costing only three to four hundred yuan, it is a good deal.
In large supermarkets such as Tesco and Auchan, all kinds of gift boxes with dragon patterns are put in some eye-catching positions on shelves. In the Spring Festival sales area, lots of customers are buying glutinous rice balls and seafood.
For the first three days of the Spring Festival period, despite the bad weather condition, the festival food basket maintained a smooth transportation, and the sales increased while prices dropped.
On the morning of January 25, there is a busy scene in Ningbo Vegetable Wholesale Market. Suburban vegetable farmers from Jiangbei District and Zhenhai District brought in such seasonal vegetables as green vegetables, spinach and lettuce. Meanwhile, over 100 tons of such vegetables as lamp pepper, bean, leek, pea and aubergine, are also carried to the market by trunks from places outside Ningbo. According to statistics, the turnover of the vegetable wholesales amounted to 283 tons on January 25, increased by 1.8 times compared with the day before. And the average wholesale price for vegetables is 3.63 yuan per kilo, down by 25.6% over the day before and down by 2.9% over the same period last year.
In Ningbo Aquatic Products Market, the seafood from the East Sea arrived before the Spring Festival Eve and the frozen fish stock become the main products. Besides the local aquatic products, such as hairtail, pomfret, eel, swimming crab, little clubs fish, small yellow croaker, sepia and squid, imported salmon, tuna, squid and pomfret, etc. from Norway, the United States and Japan can also be seen in the market. According to statistics, since the Spring Festival Eve, the turnover of aquatic products has reached 580 tons. The average wholesale price on the 25th is 28.37 yuan per kilo, down by 13.4% over the period before the festival.
Since the Spring Festival Eve, the total sale of pork reached 225 tons in the urban district, an increase of 3.1% over the same period last year. The average wholesale price of pork on the 25th is 23.73 yuan per kilo, down by 0.9% over the period before the festival. In Ningbo Meat, Poultry and Egg Wholesale Market, about 330,000 live chickens were sold, an increase of 85% over the same period last year, while the sale of eggs reached 222 tons, almost the same as that of last year. The wholesale price for live chicken and egg are 13.18 yuan per kilo and 7.48 yuan per kilo respectively, down by 3.7% and 20.3% respectively over the same period last year.