China's Dalian highly supports shipbuilding sector amid anti-COVID fight

Dalian City of northeast China's Liaoning Province has taken various measures to support shipbuilding industry while battling the COVID-19 epidemic.

These days, a shipbuilder of the city is working in full swing.

From the beginning of the year, it has received orders of 32 vessels, worth a total of 800 million yuan (around 123 million U.S.dollars).

Another main business of the enterprise is ship repair, with most orders from foreign ship firms.

However, the company was recently reluctant to accept international orders as it is hard for crew members of foreign vessels to go ashore for daily personnel rotation.

"If foreign crew members can not carry out daily personnel rotation smoothly, it will significantly affect our repair business, because vessels will not be able to enter our dock," said Zhang Shuhai, general manager of the company.

Learning about the concerns, local authorities soon provided special solutions for the the company, conducting nucleic acid testing for foreign crew members in a closed-loop environment and arranged for them to stay in designed hotels for quarantine.

Also due to the COVID-19 epidemic, suppliers of shipbuilders' supporting equipment suspended production or delayed supply.

The supply of imported parts from abroad is unstable, either.

To solve the problems, authorities have designated officials to remove blocks in supply chains together with business heads.

"With efforts of multiple sides, we have integrated production resources of our industrial park, helped shipyards and manufacturing enterprises to jointly extend industrial chains cooperation in basic vessel equipment supplies. In doing so, we have promoted resource sharing, advantage complementation, and win-win cooperation among enterprises," said local official Wang Shuanghong.

In the meantime, the government built both online and offline job fair platforms to help shipbuilders which had to give up some orders due to difficulties in recruiting enough employees.

"We have set up recruitment platforms for enterprises in our jurisdiction and organized special job fairs. In the first quarter, we successfully introduced more than 500 workers of various types for shipbuilders," said another official Dong Chunsheng.

With these supportive measures, shipbuilders have stepped up production.

"We delivered 10 large ships in the first quarter alone, which is a record high in our history. This year, we plan to deliver 26 ships. Given the current situation, we are confident to achieve our target ahead of schedule," said Cao Bing, a senior manager of Dalian Cosco Khi Ship engineering Co.,Ltd.

According to data from the Dalian Municipal Bureau of Statistics, the city's shipbuilding industry registered an operating income of 1.92 billion yuan from January to February, with the total profit significantly up from pre-pandemic record.

Source: CCTV

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