The ongoing 135th session of the China Import and Export Fair, or the Canton Fair, has introduced 209 enterprises provide online or on-site one-stop services to facilitate trading for exhibitors.
As the country's oldest and most comprehensive trade fair, the Canton Fair is known as China's "barometer" for foreign trade. The current session, scheduled for April 15 to May 5 in Guangzhou, the provincial capital of Guangdong in south China, draws over 29,000 exhibitors from around the world with a total of 74,000 exhibition booths.
As of Wednesday, more than 100,000 overseas buyers from 212 countries and regions attended the 135th Canton Fair, an increase of 23 percent over the previous spring session of the fair.
Trade services provided by the fair covers every procedure following an intention reached between an exhibitor and a buyer, from logistics and warehousing, finance and insurance, cross-border e-commerce, testing and certification, business consulting, to comprehensive services.
Services are available within the exhibition areas as windows of the more than 200 service enterprises flank the main passageway of the exhibition venue.
Most of these service enterprises are logistics and warehousing providers. They offer options of container vessels, China-Europe Railway Express, and China-Central Asia freight trains for transportation, either by unimodal or sea-land-air multimodal. A complete set of solutions is there for any kinds of goods, from small goods such as food, clothing, cosmetics, to large ones as machines, automobiles or aircrafts.
The twice-a-year Canton Fair has improved its trade supporting services over the past decades since it was launched in 1957, and has become more considerate for the participants.
For instance, the current session has added to the basic multilingual service brochures manuals on China's tax rebate policies related to different industries such as automobiles and cross-border e-commerce. There are even guides on investment and tax policies for 104 countries and regions.
Export enterprises participating in the Canton Fair could get tax refund in five working days on average, and some enterprises can even complete drawback process in three working days.
Guangzhou Customs also sent a team of public attorneys to the 135th Canton Fair for the first time to provide consultation on laws and regulations and preferential policies in the field of import and export.
One-stop service at Canton Fair facilitates foreign trade
