A bird's-eye view of Xiamen Port in Xiamen, Fujian province. [Photo by Wang Xieyun/Xiamen Daily]

From January to April, the port of Xiamen city in East China's Fujian province exported 16.73 million metric tons of goods and 1.49 million TEUs, or twenty-foot equivalent units of containers.

That was up 15.72 percent and 7.12 percent year-on-year, respectively, showing a steady growth trend.

Meanwhile, the number of routes from Xiamen Port to member countries of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, RCEP – the giant new regional trading bloc – has reached 88. 

According to Xiamen Customs, in the first four months this year, Xiamen's foreign trade to RCEP members reached 93.36 billion yuan ($13.84 billion), an increase of 1.4 percent year-on-year and accounting for 33.9 percent of the city's total foreign trade value. 

In terms of service outsourcing, in the first quarter of this year, Xiamen enterprises undertook 19.45 billion yuan of service outsourcing contracts, up 13.8 percent year-on-year.

On May 9, the vessel Zhong Gu Xia Men berthed at Xiamen Port's Haitian Terminal and left fully loaded with cargo bound for the port of Ho Chi Minh City, in Vietnam. This marked the 88th route established between Xiamen and RCEP countries. The new route is expected to bring about 500 TEUs of container volume growth per week.  

From January to April this year, Xiamen Customs issued 2,939 RCEP certificates of origin for nearly 300 export enterprises in the city, with a value of 1.48 billion yuan.

These are expected to bring 14 million yuan in tariff reductions to these enterprises in the destination countries. 

Based on Xiamen Port's competitive advantages, some enterprises have extended their industry supply chain. Alphalog (Xiamen) Supply Chain Management Corp is one of them.

"Our logistics services grew 30-40 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of this year," said Chen Yitong, chairman of the company.

The company recently placed an order to import eight containers of food from the Netherlands. It is extending from operating in the traditional international logistics service sector to the supply chain for consumer goods – and is introducing more international brands into China with the help of its own cross-border import service platform, Chen added.

Xiamen is also giving full play to its important role in the services trade in terms of stabilizing foreign trade and investment. 

At the start of the year, the Xiamen Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine was selected to be among the second batch of national TCM service export bases, while Huaqiao University made it into the first group of national language service export bases – both firsts for Fujian province.