General

At the beginning of the Chinese New Year in Yantai Port, Shandong, there is still a cool sea breeze. A car ro-ro ship "Amsterdam" docked at the dock is waiting, and commercial vehicles are orderly entering its huge cargo hold. After the ship is fully loaded, under the on-site supervision of Yantai Customs, these 4696 international transfer goods vehicles will be exported to the international trade market by cargo ship. As an important international transportation hub for commodity vehicles in Northeast Asia, Yantai Port's convenient and efficient customs clearance environment continues to attract many car companies to handle export business.

In 2022, the Yantai area of the Shandong Pilot Free Trade Zone was approved as the first automobile export distribution type export supervision warehouse in Shandong Province. Yantai Customs comprehensively utilized convenient customs clearance measures such as "early declaration", "direct loading upon arrival at the port", and "loading and shipping at the same time" to help automobile enterprises solve the problems of tight port storage space and high storage costs caused by the rapid growth of export business, and create the optimal customs clearance environment for commodity vehicle exports.

Since the opening of the export supervision warehouse, we have accumulated over 30000 vehicles, saving millions of yuan in port storage fees alone. Nowadays, our international trade export scale of vehicles has increased from 17000 vehicles per year to 124000 vehicles in 2022, and the export volume in 2022 has increased by more than 40% compared to the same period in 2021. "said Sun Yanmei, Minister of Logistics Department of SAIC General Dongyue Automobile Co., Ltd., one of the beneficiary enterprises.

And this is just a microcosm of the rapid development of international trade promoted by institutional innovation in the Yantai Free Trade Zone. Improving efficiency, reducing fees, and optimizing the environment have always been three important directions for Yantai area to improve the level of "cross-border trade" business environment.

Over the past three years since its approval, the Yantai area has fully utilized the combined advantages of China South Korea (Yantai) Industrial Park, Comprehensive Bonded Zone, Import Trade Promotion Innovation Demonstration Zone, Cross border E-commerce Comprehensive Pilot Zone, etc., focusing on the entire process of international trade, linking customs, seaports, airports and other advantages, and solving problems through systematic and integrated reform and innovation of the free trade pilot zone, continuously promoting cross-border trade facilitation. At present, 36 institutional innovation cases at or above the provincial level have been launched in the field of cross-border trade, of which 12 have been replicated and promoted throughout the province, and 4 have been innovatively filed by the General Administration of Customs. The trade facilitation index has ranked among the top 3 in the fifth batch of free trade pilot zones in China for two consecutive years, and the evaluation score has continued to rise for the past three years.

In recent years, the business model of enterprise groups has become increasingly obvious, and the management of various links in the supply chain, such as "input, output, transfer, storage, and sales", has also expanded from a single enterprise to multiple enterprises within the group and between the group and external collaborative enterprises. However, under the impact of the three-year pandemic, the import cycle of raw materials for enterprises has been prolonged, leading to production stagnation due to shortages of raw materials, and suffering from the problem of not being able to deliver orders on time.

Therefore, with the strong support of Yantai Customs, the Yantai area has pioneered the "Enterprise Group Processing Trade Bonded Supervision Model", pressing the "acceleration button" for the flow of processing trade materials. Within the group, subsidiaries can enjoy various conveniences such as free transfer and circulation of bonded goods, breaking the barriers that previously prevented the circulation of bonded materials between enterprises, and improving production and operation efficiency by more than 20%. At the same time, encourage processing trade enterprises with good production and operation conditions to apply for customs AEO certification, comprehensively reduce institutional transaction costs for enterprises, and help enterprises enjoy more convenient customs clearance in international trade.

At present, the Yantai area has piloted multiple businesses such as independent storage of goods, transfer of bonded materials, outsourcing processing, and exchange of bonded materials. In 2022, the first "global maintenance" business of game consoles in the province has been launched. With the continuous rise of new types of processing trade formats, high-precision and cutting-edge industries such as LCD displays, integrated circuits, marine equipment, and biopharmaceuticals have blossomed in many places. Innovation and upgrading of processing trade have injected new momentum into foreign trade stability and quality improvement.