Statistics from the Yangtze River Administration, the Ministry of Transport, show that throughput along the Yangtze in August increased 12.7 per cent to 101m tons over the same period last year. Out of this total, foreign-trade related throughput increased by 18.2 per cent to 12.8m tons. Container throughput climbed by nearly 14 per cent year-on-year to 70,000 teu.

For the first eight months of 2009, throughput of general cargo stood at 719m tons, up 5.7 per cent year-on-year, while throughput for containers was unchanged at 4.62m teu.