The city in Guangdong Province is next to the international metropolitan of Hong Kong. Its income from the container port contributed 13 percent to the city's economic growth last year.

The Shenzhen container terminal has had an average annual freight handling growth of 44.6 percent for five years. It now has 69 overseas routes and records a monthly run of 417 ships.

The port is expected to receive investments of 15.65 billion yuan (about US$2 billion) in the next four years, most of which will be used to open ten new berths. This will increase the container handling capacity of the port by another 1.6 million TEUs.

According to the port's expansion plan, its annual freight will amount to 85 million tons of cargo and 7 million TEUs of containers by 2005 and open 100 overseas routes to become the eighth biggest container port in the world.

(( January 15, 2002