Freight volume surpasses 1b metric tons on Pearl River

Freight volume on the Pearl River reached more than 1 billion metric tons last year, up 5.5 percent year-on-year, playing an increasingly important role in supporting economic construction in the provinces and regions along the river, according to authorities.

"It was the first time it has surpassed 1 billion metric tons in the river's transport history, marking it as a milestone in constructing a golden water channel along the more than 15,600 kilometer-long waterway," said Wang Canqiang, spokesman with The Pearl River Administration of Navigational Affairs under the Ministry of Transport, on Monday.

Meanwhile the container throughput of inner river ports along the Pearl River reached more than 14 million TEUs last year, up13.4 percent year-on-year, according to Wang.

"Now the Pearl River has become the second-largest river in terms of freight volume in the country, following the Yangtze River, and it plays a big part in promoting economic development and cooperation among the provinces and regions along the river," Wang said at a press conference in this Guangdong provincial capital in South China.

Wang promised his administration would continue to speed up construction of environmentally friendly "green model channels" along the waterway to protect the ecology of the country's third-longest river system through the introduction of more new and hi-tech and artificial intelligent technologies and equipment in the new year.

That aims to better serve economic construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and the entire Pearl River Basin in upcoming years.

The Pearl River's major tributaries are the Xijiang, Dongjiang and Beijiang rivers, and it runs through Guangdong, Yunnan, Guizhou, Jiangxi, Fujian and Hunan provinces, as well as the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions.