Entering ChinaSun Meijun, Secretary of the Party Committee of the General Administration of Customs, said at the National Customs Work Conference on the 7th that China’s foreign trade will break through the 43 trillion yuan mark for the first time in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 5%, and maintain its position as the largest country in trade in goods for the eighth consecutive year.
In 2024, in the face of increasing external uncertainties and unstable factors, the customs will provide excellent services to promote convenience and promote the quality and quantity of China’s foreign trade: 16 measures to further optimize the business environment at ports and promote the facilitation of customs clearance for enterprises will be introduced and implemented throughout the year; Tariff concessions and various preferential tax measures have been implemented, and a total of 282.9 billion yuan of tax refunds have been exempted; Special actions to promote cross-border trade facilitation have been carried out in 20 cities, and 29 reform and innovation measures have been replicated and promoted across the country; 111 kinds of agricultural and food products from 62 countries and regions were allowed to be exported to China; promote the opening and expansion of 14 new ports; Seven bonded logistics centers were established.
Sun Meijun said that at present, the biggest challenge facing the development of China’s foreign trade is the impact of the external environment. In 2025, the national customs should take the promotion of high-quality development and high-level opening-up as the top priority, and timely introduce support measures with strong precision and high gold content to help enterprises stabilize orders, expand the market, strengthen supervision and optimize services, and achieve both “live” and “manageable”.
Specifically, in terms of promoting the stability and quality of foreign trade, the key tasks include: promoting the superposition of stock increment policies, increasing the implementation and effect evaluation of the 16 support measures of the Customs, lengthening the list of preferential measures for “Authorized Economic Operators” (AEO) enterprises, and introducing and implementing special measures for the Customs to promote the steady growth of foreign trade; Carry out special actions to promote cross-border trade facilitation in 2025, promote the innovation of the “single window” service model for international trade, implement several measures to further promote customs clearance facilitation at air ports, and support the construction of logistics projects such as road-rail intermodal transport; Deepen the reform of processing trade, promote the development of bonded maintenance and bonded remanufacturing, promote the diversification of agricultural and food product imports, and promote the expansion of agricultural and food product exports.
In terms of high-level opening-up services, the national customs will focus on expanding institutional opening-up and deepening the innovation of the customs supervision system. including high-quality services for the Belt and Road Initiative; Do a good job in the operation of the Hainan Free Trade Port; Implement the upgrading strategy of the Pilot Free Trade Zone, study and implement a new round of measures for the Customs to support the development of the Guangdong-Macao In-Depth Cooperation Zone in Hengqin, accelerate the transformation and upgrading of the CBZ, and promote the reform of the approval mechanism for bonded logistics centers; Carry out pilot projects for comprehensive performance evaluation of ports, guide local governments to accelerate the construction of border port projects, and promote the expansion and quality improvement of key border ports in Northeast China, Xinjiang, Tibet, etc.
