Chinese, foreign firms jointly promote BRI

World
Europe

Three Chinese conglomerates and their foreign business partners were invited on Thursday by the State Council Information Office (SCIO) to share their experiences under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The three Chinese companies invited were China COSCO SHIPPING Corporation Limited, China Communications Construction Group Co., Ltd. and Wanhua Chemical Group respectively.

COSCO SHIPPING, a Fortune Global 500 company and the world's largest shipping service supplier, has been committed to the BRI for the past five years by facilitating trade flows between countries involved in the initiative and upgrading their infrastructure such as transportation facilities.

Situated in southwest Athens, the Greek Port of Piraeus ranks among the top 10 in Europe and 36th in the world, playing a pivotal role in pressing ahead with the BRI by connecting Central and East Europe through the China-Europe land-sea express and Hungary-Serbia railway to achieve the synergistic effect of integrating sea and land transportation.

COSCO SHIPPING officially took over the port's operation in 2010, and marked changes have been made since.

The Piraeus project is projected to add 474.7 million euros by 2025 to the Greek financial revenue, create 31,000 job opportunities, and ramp up the country's GDP by 0.8 percentage points.

By the end of June 2018, it had put into service 260 container liners and opened 165 shipping routes along the Belt and Road countries, with the weekly accumulated shipping space hitting 215,000 TEU, official data showed.

China Communications Construction Group Co., Ltd. the world's third-largest and Asia's largest international engineering contractor was also present at the news briefing. It has worked with overseas partners in building over 13,000 kilometers of roads, more than 180 bridges, 121 deep-water berths, and 17 airports, becoming a major contributor to the BRI.

The Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway Project (Mombasa-Nairobi SGR) is amid the first batch of BRI achievements, and connects Mombasa, Kenya's largest port city, with the capital city Nairobi.

As of October 31, 2018, it had an average occupancy rate of 103.1 percent and accommodated two million person-time passengers, that is, four out of seven in Nairobi have been aboard trains running on the railway.

Wanhua Chemical Group, one of the most competitive MDI (Methylene Diphenyl Diisocyanate) producers in the world and the biggest TDI supplier in Europe, acquired a Hungarian chemical company BorsodChem Zrt. in 2011, which achieved a net profit of 500 million euros in 2017.