Ministry of Transport: The transportation economy in the first three quarters was generally stable

Source: People's Daily Original manuscript

Beijing, 28 Oct (People's Daily Online) -- Today, the Ministry of Transport held a regular press conference for October. Liu Pengfei, spokesman of the Ministry of Transport, said that in the first three quarters of 2021, the transportation economy was generally stable, and the average growth rate of transportation investment, freight volume and port cargo throughput in two years was about 6%, and there were no major ups and downs. Among them, in the quarter of the third quarter, due to the high base of the same period last year, extreme weather, multi-point sporadic epidemic and other factors, the average growth rate of some indicators in two years has slowed down compared with the first half of the year, but compared with before the epidemic, the overall situation remains in a reasonable range.

"There are also many bright spots in the economic operation of the transportation industry, such as the number of China-Europe express trains in the first three quarters exceeded 10,000 trains, and the continuous and rapid growth of express delivery business, which provided a strong transportation guarantee for serving economic and social development." Liu Pengfei said.

First, investment remains high. The scale of investment in transportation fixed assets remained high, with investment of more than 2.5 trillion yuan completed in the first three quarters, an increase of 2% year-on-year, and an average growth of 5.9% in two years, of which the average growth rate of 3.9% in the three quarters and two years was 3.9%. In the first three quarters, investment in highways exceeded 1.8 trillion yuan, an increase of 4.9% year-on-year; investment in inland waterways exceeded 50 billion yuan, an increase of 9.7% year-on-year; and coastal investment exceeded 54 billion yuan, an increase of 24.4% year-on-year.

Second, there have been fluctuations in the recovery of passenger transportation, and personalized travel such as private cars has maintained growth. Affected by the multi-point sporadic epidemic in local areas, the commercial passenger traffic and urban public transportation passenger traffic have fluctuated, and the first, second and third quarters have generally shown the characteristics of "low at both ends and high in the middle", with an average decline of 30.4% and 11% in the first three quarters of the two years, respectively. At the same time, personalized travel such as private cars maintained growth, and the average daily cross-sectional traffic of highway passenger cars and ordinary national and provincial highway passenger cars in the first three quarters increased by 10.8% and 15.9% respectively year-on-year, and the average growth rate in two years was more than 5%.

Third, the freight volume continued to grow. The overall commercial freight volume maintained rapid growth, with 38.3 billion tons in the first three quarters, an increase of 16.8% year-on-year, an average growth of 6.3% in two years, of which the average growth rate of 4.7% in the three quarters and two years was better matched with macroeconomic trends.

Fourth, the cargo throughput of the port continues to grow. In the first three quarters, the port cargo throughput and container throughput reached 11.55 billion tons and 210 million TEUs respectively, an increase of 8.9% and 9.5% year-on-year, and an average growth rate of 5.9% and 4% in the two years, of which the average growth rate of 4.3% and 3.3% in the three quarters and two years was roughly the same as the pre-epidemic growth level.