The Changsha Customs Authority and the Port Office of the People's Government of Hunan Province jointly held a conference on promoting the expansion and quality improvement of Hunan's comprehensive bonded zones and a policy briefing on June 30. In April, the General Office of the State Council forwarded the "Several Measures to Promote the Expansion and Quality Improvement of Comprehensive Bonded Zones" issued by the General Administration of Customs, proposing 24 reform measures. These provide systematic policy support for Hunan's comprehensive bonded zones to achieve expansion and quality improvement through institutional innovation and to realize differentiated, high-quality development. The Changsha Customs Authority explained that the new policy will bring benefits to Hunan's comprehensive bonded zones and foreign trade in four aspects.

New business models are "deregulated" and expanded, giving enterprises broader market space. The measures shift bonded maintenance from a "positive list" to a "negative list" management approach, allowing finished bonded maintenance products to be sold domestically and broadening access restrictions. This means that enterprises providing bonded maintenance services within comprehensive bonded zones can undertake a wider range and larger volume of global maintenance orders, further opening up sales channels in the domestic market. Taking the Chenzhou Comprehensive Bonded Zone as an example, the new policy will further unleash its development potential and support its goal of fostering a specialized bonded zone for bonded maintenance.

Enhanced functions empower upgrades, achieving closer alignment with national strategies. The measures propose shifting the focus of comprehensive bonded zones from traditional foreign trade to serving national strategic needs, helping Hunan expand opening-up and actively integrate into major national strategies. For instance, supporting the building of collection, distribution, storage, and transportation bases for bulk commodities will assist Yueyang in establishing a bulk commodity distribution and trading hub relying on Chenglingji Port. Supporting physical blending operations for metal mineral products will benefit Chenzhou in developing a bonded blending business for silver-bearing ore, thereby helping Hunan's non-ferrous metal smelting industry extend and strengthen its industrial chains.

With domestic sales channels now fully established, enterprises within the zones are taking a more balanced "two-pronged" approach. These measures support the coordinated development of comprehensive bonded zones and ports, which will help improve the convenience of international transportation. The document supports export-to-domestic sales, facilitating better integration of enterprises within the zones with the domestic market. The document highlights the expansion of information sharing and mutual recognition, introducing barcode labeling for products within the zones to facilitate alignment with international standards. The measures underscore optimizing cross-border settlement, enabling enterprises within the zones to benefit from policies facilitating foreign exchange receipts and payments related to trade.

Smart supervision provides comprehensive support, leading to higher customs clearance efficiency and lower costs for businesses. The measures drive the transformation of supervision methods in comprehensive bonded zones from traditional enclosure management to digital, intelligent, and coordinated approaches. This includes building a smart supervision system and exploring the implementation of embedded networked supervision, achieving smart oversight with non-disruptive inspections and ubiquitous services.

Currently, Hunan has five comprehensive bonded zones: Changsha Huanghua, Yueyang Chenglingji, Xiangtan, Hengyang, and Chenzhou, ranking among the top in central and western China and contributing approximately 20% of the province's foreign trade. From January to May this year, the province's comprehensive bonded zones recorded an import and export value of 49.189 billion CNY, a year-on-year increase of 23.9%, which was 10.1 percentage points higher than the province's average growth rate of foreign trade.

责编：宛俊余

一审：宛俊余

二审：秦慧英

三审：张权

来源：湖南省政府门户网