Statistics from the Yangtze River Administration show that the throughput of general cargo via all the major ports along the Yangtze trunk line rose by 33.6 per cent year-on-year to 120m tons in April, 7.7 per cent up on March; container throughput rose by 46 per cent to 680,000 TEU, up 3.7 per cent over the previous month. Out of this total, foreign trade-related throughput increased by 8.5 per year-on-year cent to 15.2m tons, and up 9 per cent on March.

Provisional data for the first four months of 2010 show that total cargo throughput reached 431m tons, up 34.5 per cent compared with the same period last year, while container throughput totalled 2.52m TEU, up 37.6 per cent.

According to an official forecast, by the end of the year total cargo throughput could reach 1.34bn tons, up 10 per cent, while container throughput is expected to reach 2.17m TEU, an increase of 18 per cent.