Pingtan Creates Main Channel for Access to Taiwan's Agricultural and Fishery Products

The Management Committee of Pingtan Comprehensive Pilot Zone in Fujian Province recently said that the turnover of the online trading platform for agricultural and fishery products from both sides of the Taiwan Strait had hit 30 million yuan (RMB, the same below) since the platform was launched just a month ago on June 17.

Located in the Pingtan Comprehensive Pilot Zone, the online trading platform for agricultural and fishery products from both sides of the Taiwan Strait is operated by Pingtan Free Trade Zone Cross-Strait Development Co., Ltd., providing one-stop cross-border trading services for farmers and agricultural and fishery associations in Taiwan as well as trading enterprises on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

There are currently more than 30 merchants on the platform, with purchase amount reached at 735 million yuan. A variety of trading services such as cross-border transactions and purchase and pre-sales of agricultural and fishery products from Taiwan have been created, along with cross-strait shipping and inspection and declarations, cold chain warehousing, trade arbitration and other supporting services to be provided gradually, providing a full chain of trade services for cross-strait agricultural and fishery products.

According to Lin Zhiyuan, Deputy General Manager of Pingtan Free Trade Zone Cross-Strait Development Co., Ltd., Taiwan's agricultural associations, fishery associations and relevant companies can directly settle in this platform. For mainland buyers, they do not have to be anxious about the intervention of intermediate traders, and can directly purchase Taiwan's fishery products and fruits.

The launch of the online trading platform for agricultural and fishery products from both sides of the Taiwan Strait is an important initiative for the Pingtan Comprehensive Pilot Zone to build the main channel for access to Taiwan's agricultural and fishery products. For this reason, Pingtan has also introduced an incentive and subsidy policy for platform trading to encourage trade parties to carry out online trading so as to play its pivotal role in the trading of agricultural and fishery products across the Taiwan Strait.

According to the Management Committee of Pingtan Comprehensive Pilot Zone, Pingtan fully subsidizes the import value-added tax on merchants who trade through the online trading platform for agricultural and fishery products from both sides of the Taiwan Strait and import from Pingtan Port, and grants fuel subsidies according to the voyage, which maximizes the benefits for farmers and fishermen across the Taiwan Strait.

On January 20 this year, the first voyage was successfully made by the "Taipei Express" on the Kaohsiung-Pingtan freight shipping route, marking the opening of the new channel for the entry of Taiwan's agricultural and fishery products into the Chinese mainland. This also contributes to the full coverage of the freight shipping routes from Pingtan to Taichung, Taipei and Kaohsiung. A month later, the Kaohsiung-Pingtan direct sea freight route began normal operation, and the market for the trading of Taiwan's agricultural and fishery products in Pingtan opened.

According to official statistics, since the first voyage on the Kaohsiung-Pingtan freight shipping route, Taiwan's agricultural and fishery products have entered Pingtan through more than 50 voyages, weighing about 16,000 tons, with a cargo value of over 100 million yuan.

On July 11 this year, the sea passenger liner "Haixiahao" made its first trip on the Pingtan-Kaohsiung shipping route. Industry sources believe that since southern Taiwan is a major production area for agricultural and fishery products that are mainly exported from Kaohsiung, it is better for exporting time-sensitive chilled agricultural and fishery products; the "Haixiahao" features the cargo ro-ro function, which is complemented with the "Taipei Express" traveling on the Pingtan- Kaohsiung freight shipping route.

According to Chen Shanguang, Secretary of the Party Working Committee of Pingtan Comprehensive Pilot Zone, Pingtan boasts the most complete and best combination of routes to Taiwan in Chinese mainland, with more prominent unique advantages of air transportation speed and shipping, greatly facilitating cross-strait passenger exchanges and promoting the booming of various business formats such as agricultural and fishery product trading, cross-border e-commerce and shipping express delivery. This contributes to a good momentum of "prosperity of both people and goods" in Pingtan.

He said that Pingtan will expand the sales channels in the mainland to provide a broad space for the sales of Taiwan's agricultural and fishery products. It will also boost cross-strait agricultural and fishery industries to strengthen connection in terms of management, technology, capital, market and other fields, and leverage information connectivity to enable optimized configuration of resource and sales channels.