Vehicles pass through an expressway toll station to get into the China (Zhejiang) Pilot Free Trade Zone in Zhoushan, East China's Zhejiang province, on Feb 28, 2017. [Photo/IC]

The State Council recently announced the fifth batch of 18 reform achievements made by China's pilot free trade zones that will be replicated and promoted elsewhere across the nation. Four achievements on the list are from the China (Zhejiang) Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ) in Zhoushan, East China's Zhejiang province.

Zhejiang FTZ now altogether has 10 reform achievements selected by the State Council to be replicated and promoted, accounting for 21 percent of the 48 selected since the zone was established in 2017, the most among the same batch (third batch) of China's FTZs.

Other FTZs of the third batch are spread throughout China's Liaoning, Henan, Hubei, Chongqing, Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces. 

The 18 new reform achievements selected mainly deal with investment management, trade facilitation and supervision.

The four achievements of the Zhejiang FTZ include a simplified customs clearance process for international-voyage ships, a trans-harbor bunker fuel supply mode, optimized quarantine and supervision for imported food sent via river-sea intermodal transport, and optimized supervision of imported bonded oil.

The simplified customs clearance process requires companies to input related information of their ships into a national standard customs declaration system only once, and the whole subsequent customs clearance process is fulfilled online, without the need for companies to provide other paper materials, except for some necessary exit-entry documents of sailors. 

With this process, customs clearance time for such ships has been cut from 16 hours to only 2 hours. 

Optimized quarantine and supervision is achieved by strengthening risk control and remote video monitoring of ships carrying imported food, as well as improving quarantine efficiency, which reduces the demurrage time of ships in Zhoushan Port.

It is estimated that the move will save demurrage costs of around 37.5 million yuan ($5.54 million) for food processing and trade companies in Zhoushan every year.

The trans-harbor bunker fuel supply mode, implemented last year, helped the Zhoushan Port supply 2.33 million metric tons of bunker fuel by the end of April, significantly contributing to the port's turning into the top one in China and the 10th biggest in the world in terms of bunker fuel supply.

The Zhejiang FTZ has so far made 84 reform achievements, 34 of which are the first of their kind in China. It plans to record a total of 100 reform achievements by year end.