Southwest China’s Tibet is striving to speed up its construction of port infrastructure and land-based trade routes to South Asia, so as to help enhance its foreign trade, Xinhua reported.

Latest statistics shows a sound momentum of growth in Tibet’s foreign trade, with import and export totaling about USD 376 million, 13.5% up over the same period in 2010.

During the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan” period (2011-2015), Tibet plans to fuel its economic growth mainly by strengthening foreign trade through tighter connection between its markets and the inland markets and international markets as well. For this reason, the local government is making efforts to improve its infrastructure with a series port construction projects at Geelong Port, Zham Port, Burang Port, Yadong Port and Riwo Port.

In the “Eleventh Five-Year Plan” period (2006-2010), Tibet had started the construction of the five ports in line with a port-driven development strategy, namely, to focus on the development of Geelong Port, to steadily raise the capability of Zham Port, to take positive measures to resume the operation of Yadong Port and to gradually develop Burang Port and Riwo Port.

By end of June, Tibet has achieved an export value of USD 350.61 million, with a 23.2% increase compared to that of the same period last year. In contrast, the import value in H1 experienced a year-on-year decline of 45.8% to USD 25.2 million.

Besides, the contracted foreign capital increase exceeded USD 30 million while about USD 3.67 million was in actual use.