On July 17, the first consignment of imported fuel oil through railway transit was transferred from Erenhot Port to Zibo City, Shandong Province. Under onsite supervision of officers from Zibo Customs House(affiliated to Jinan Customs District), the fuel oil was injected slowly into ZhengBen Logistics’ public bonded warehouse for liquid chemicals. This move created a new supervision model over imported fuel oil through railway transit.

“If measured by the annual import of 0.5 million tons, the fuel oil from Russia, through direct Customs transit from Erenhot to Zibo, can be injected into the bonded warehouse with 15 days tax-payment delay, meaning a cut-down of CNY 3 million in financial cost. That will greatly improve the capital utilization so as to achieve a win-win situation for both social and economic benefits,” said Liu Jinyan, Vice General Manager of ZhengBen Logistics, a unit under Shandong QingYuan Group.

“Unlike outward railway transit which has been developed for many years, inward railway transit has never been tried before in Zibo city,” according to Chai Hongxiang, Section Chief of Logistics Supervision of Zibo Customs House.If fuel oil was imported via Erenhot Port, procedures such as declaration, tax payment, inspection and release must be handled at Erenhot Customs, having such negative factors as long distance, time consumption and high cost, which brought troubles to inland enterprises of going  through the formalities and allocating funds. Today, the new model can effectively alleviate such a bottleneck, allowing importers to transfer fuel oil to ZhenBen Logistics’ bonded warehouse and pay their taxes at the time of discharge from the warehouse, thus reducing the occupation of funds and quickening the import process.