Aerial photo of Shanghai's Yangshan Port on April 24, 2022 Photo: cnsphoto

Shanghai's cargo throughput and foreign trade volume have been picking up since mid-April, and the city will continue unclog-ging industrial chains with white-lists and green channels in logistics and the financial sector, local officials said on Wednesday.

The first batch of a white-list for the financial sector including 864 institutions was released on Wednesday, accounting for one-third of Shanghai's total, which analysts said will allow foreign trade settlements to resume by the end of May.

Since mid-April, cargo throughput at ports in Shanghai has gradually picked up after measures were taken to accelerate customs clearance and safeguard industrial chains, Liu Bo, deputy head of Shanghai Customs, said at a regular press briefing on Wednesday.

International shipping conglomerate Maersk confirmed to the Global Times that its cargo throughput was increasing in Shanghai.

"Last week, both export empty pick-up and laden gate-in have recovered to above 65 percent, and import laden pick-up has im-proved to 80 to 90 percent," Caroline Wu, managing director of Maersk Greater China, said in a statement sent to the Global Times on Wednesday.

According to Wu, the capacity of Maersk trucking service from or to Shanghai has re-sumed by 70 percent. For airfreight, Maersk has maintained gateway operations in Shanghai and continues to see more airlines resuming flights for the coming weeks.

Maersk has strengthened barge services by offering more than 20 corridors to create several "land to water" alternative transport solutions, covering the hinterland of East China to ensure the stability of supply chains. 

Ocean East Logistics company, one of Maersk's wholly owned subsidiaries in Shanghai, has continued "closed-loop" operations since mid-April as a white-list company, helping with warehousing, consolidation and distribution services.

As Shanghai's epidemic control has achieved substantive results, it is estimated that foreign trade in Shanghai will be fully restored by the end of June and see robust growth in the third quarter, Xi Junyang, a professor at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Shanghai on Wednesday also announced the first batch of white-list companies in the finance sector, covering 864 institutions in-cluding major banks, securities brokers and futures companies.

"The financial institutions on the white-list are estimated at 30 to 40 percent of the total number in the city. With the opening of some branches, foreign trade settlements by financial institutions are expected to resume by the end of May, which will further boost the recovery of imports and exports," Xi said.

Companies in the Lingang New Area of the China (Shanghai) Free Trade Zone, an epi-center of new-energy vehicles, semiconductors and high-end equipment manufacturing in Shanghai, also saw an accelerated work resumption pace with an increasing number of employees returning.

As of Tuesday, 87 percent of warehousing and logistics enterprises operating in the Yangshan Special Comprehensive Bonded Zone and logistics park of Lingang New Area had resumed operations and 53 percent of the employees had returned to work.

According to Liu, Shanghai will continue to build a green channel for companies involved in integrated circuits, biomedicine and automobile manufacturing, and provide them with convenient customs clearance services, such as mutual recognition of customs in the Yangtze River Delta region.

Shanghai's total foreign trade expanded by 14.6 percent year-on-year to reach 1.01 tril-lion yuan ($158 billion) in the first quarter of 2022, maintaining impressive growth mo-mentum as the locomotive of the nation's foreign trade.