Throughput capacity of Chinese seaports will grow more than 80 percent from the current 2.89 billion tons in the next five years, according to Vice Minister of Communications Xu Zuyuan.

Meanwhile, the annual throughput of Chinese ports, including seaports and river ports, will total 7.2 billion tons by 2010, up from 4.85 billion tons in 2005, Xu said Monday at a national conference on port safety.

With a soaring national economy, China has been investing heavily on port construction in recent years.

Statistics by the Ministry of Communications showed that China had more than 1,400 ports in 2005, ten of which with a throughput capacity of 100 million tons. Total throughput of all Chinese ports topped the world consecutively in the past three years.

At present, 90 percent freight of China's foreign trade is shipped by maritime transportation, and foreign trade volume accounts for 80.2 percent of China's gross domestic product, Xu said.

"The ports face new safety problems along with their expanding throughput," Xu said. According to him, throughput of dangerous goods, which accounted for 13 percent of the total in 2005, grows 20 percent annually in recent years.

Xu promised that, by making the port companies the major taker of safety responsibilities, safety of Chinese ports reach or approach the level of the middling developed nations by 2010. That is, for every thousand port staff, fewer than 0.04 persons are killed by accidents at work place.

(Xinhua News Agency May 30, 2006)