Zhuhai opening route to port of Vitoria in Brazil

Zhuhai port is seeking to develop trade with Portuguese-speaking nations, with a particular focus on Brazil. The port plans “to build on the close ties between Macau and Brazil,” said Yin Zhu, a scholar from Zhuhai College of Jilin University, quoted yesterday by The Journal of Commerce.
The Brazilian media outlet said that a direct route from Zhuhai to the port of Vitoria in Brazil will open later in the year.
The port is in the meantime developing an online logistics platform, a pulp distribution center, a grain transshipment center and inland ports. There is also activity in the Henqing free trade zone on an island off Zhuhai, where bonded warehouses are under construction.
Chinese port volumes were flat in the first half of the year, growing just over 1 percent year-over-year. Traffic in July rose 4 percent, but the official purchasing managers’ index, which measures activity at state-owned and large enterprises, fell to 49.9 from a reading of 50.0 in June, which is below the 50-point mark that separates growth from contraction.
The Zhuhai port is banking on increased trade with Pakistan and South America to help it more than double its annual container traffic by 2020.
The port’s goal of handling 3.1 million 20-foot-equivalent units then is more than double the 1.4 million TEUs Zhuhai expects to handle in 2016, which would be an 18.6 percent growth in traffic from 2015, The Journal of Commerce reported.

Fair and Trade Association signs regional agreement to promote sustainability expo

The Macau Fair and Trade Association (MFTA) and the Mice Alliance of Pan-Pearl River Delta Cities signed an agreement on a sustainability exhibition yesterday.
The agreement was signed at the 11 Pan-Pearl Delta Regional Cooperation and Development Forum and Economic and Trade Fair (PPRD Forum) in Guangzhou.
The new agreement is expected to foster joint regional developments and other collaborations on such events for the MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions) sector. The agreement also focuses on the assistance and support that Macau is offering to other members of the forum.
To cement the agreement, MFTA president Lam Chong In said Macau’s MICE sector will invite 30 cities from the Pan-Pearl Delta regions to visit the territory for the launch of an upcoming sustainability event.
Lam hopes for at least seven cities in the area to display a green exhibition next year, according to a report by TDM.
MFTA had previously received a sustainable development award from the Global Association of the Exhibition Industry for its “best innovative environmental initiative” by implementing the “Green Booth Award and Green Electricity Fee Rebate”.
The PPRD Forum was proposed in 2003 as a platform for regional cooperation between nine provinces (mostly in south China, including Fujian and Hainan) and the two special administrative regions.  Staff reporter