The first train for transporting Lao bananas to China via the China-Laos Railway arrived at the Huaihua International Land Port at 5:30 on December 10. The freight train carrying 25 cold-chain containers was loaded with 500 tons of fresh Lao bananas. This is the first agricultural product freight train under the "one railway and two industrial parks" project between Hunan provincial government and Laos.

The banana train departed from Vientiane, capital of Laos on December 7 and traveled for three days before arriving in Hunan. This batch of bananas were jointly purchased by the Xuanye (Laos) Co., Ltd. and Hongxing Agricultural Product Supply Chain Management (Hunan) Co., Ltd. The train would travel directly to the Changsha North Station via the Huaihua West Station and the bananas would be distributed throughout the country from the Changsha Red Star Global Agricultural Products Wholesale Center.

The China-Laos Railway will continue to support the shipment of Lao agricultural products to China, with more than two freight trains weekly. It was learned from the Laos-China Railway Co., Ltd., a joint venture based in Lao capital Vientiane responsible for the operation of the railway's Lao section.

The Hunan Provincial People's Government and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MOAF) of the Lao People's Democratic Republic signed a memorandum of cooperation (MoC) on the "one railway and two industrial parks" project in August this year. Under the project, the two sides will use the China-Laos Railway as a channel to comprehensively strengthen the international agricultural cooperation and economic and trade exchanges between Hunan Province and Laos through the joint construction of a linkage between the modern agricultural industrial park in Vientiane and related industrial parks in Hunan Province. Both sides will join hands to realize the annual average agricultural produce trade volume of over 1 million tons between Laos and Hunan Province during the agreement period.

Li Chun, deputy director of the Huaihua Customs, said that Hunan has handled 30 China-Laos freight trains carrying a total of 1,528 TEUs of containers weighing 16,000 tons since the China-Laos Railway started operations in December 2021. The Changsha Customs and Kunming Customs have signed a MoC to simplify customs clearance and improve customs efficiency of the China-Laos Railway.

This article is from the Hunan Provincial Government www.enghunan.gov.cn.

Translator: Xiao Juan

Chinese source: hunan.gov.cn