The city's planned Dayaowan Bonded Port Area will integrate all the preferential policies granted by the central government to bonded areas, export processing areas and bonded logistics parks, according to one of its leading officials.

The planned bonded port in northeast China's Liaoning Province covers an area of 6.88 square kilometres, consisting of a container terminal, an automobile terminal and a logistics park, said Zhang Shikun, director of Dalian Bonded Area Administrative Committee.

Dayaowan is one of three bonded port areas being constructed in the country. The other two are Dongjiang Bonded Port Area in Tianjin and Yangshan Bonded Port Area in Shanghai. The State Council, China's cabinet, approved the construction of Dayaowan Bonded Port Area in August.

Zhang said the key task now was to maximize the area's effectiveness in terms of international trade, export processing, storage and exhibition of bonded commodities.

At the same time the port will extend its services to land ports in the hinterland of the region, Zhang said.

More than 70 percent of the region's containers are currently handled at Dayaowan Container Terminal.

Six new berths are being constructed as part of the second phase of the construction of the bonded port. In the near future, after its third-phase project is completed, Dayawan Port, with a 7-kilometre-long shoreline, will become a container complex with 21 container berths, and an annual handling capacity of 10 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs).

"As a free-trade port with Chinese characteristics, the Dayaowan Bonded Port Area can provide strong support for building Dalian into an international transportation hub in Northeast Asia," said Xia Deren, the city's mayor.

In 2003 the State Council approved the construction of an international transportation hub in the city as part of its strategy to revitalize Northeast China.

(China Daily October 12, 2006)