China Releases 13th Five-Year Plan for Commercial Logistics

Five Chinese ministries including the Ministry of Commerce have jointly issued the 13th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Commercial Logistics, aiming at the healthy development of the commercial logistics industry to reduce logistics costs and improve efficiency.

The government will reduce the ratio of the retail and wholesale sectors' overall logistics costs on total GDP to about 7% by 2020. According to the plan, business enterprise logistics cost rate has shown a downward trend during the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015), with wholesale and retail logistics cost rate in 2014 at 7.7%, down 0.6 percentage points from 2008.

The plan spells out the construction of a multi-level trade logistics network during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020). Among which the construction of an urban distribution system making up of a three-tier network mainly of logistics distribution centres, specialised distribution centres and terminal distribution network, and aiming at satisfying the consumption upgrading, industrial transformation and urban development will be accelerated.

Commerce logistics will be more standardised, information-based, intensive and international, including speeding up the formation of commercial logistics standards systems covering warehousing, transportation, stevedoring, cargo handling, packaging, sorting and distribution; building multi-level logistics information service platform, developing platforms of integrated information, public information platform and information exchange which have wide business scope and strong influence; focusing on promoting specialised logistics development in e-commerce, cold chain, medicine and production materials; promoting international logistics development, supporting the setting up of logistics centres along the international transport routes of "Belt and Road", core cities along the way, key ports, key foreign economic and trade co-operation zones, developing foreign economic and trade co-operation zone served by commercial logistics.

The plan also calls for guidelines to innovate green logistics by enterprises, aiming at energy saving through the optimisation of information technology, logistics, resource allocation, and warehousing distribution management.

For details of the plan in Chinese, please see:

http://www.mofcom.gov.cn/article/b/d/201702/20170202511705.shtml