The General Administration of Customs Commissioners Office in Tianjin, Tianjin Customs, Hohhot Customs, Manzhouli Customs and Urumqi Customs signed a memorandum of cooperation in Tianjin on September 1, to strengthen coordination with each other on customs clearance facilitation to serve the needs of the Belt and Road Initiative.

The five customs jurisdictions vowed to make better use of the ports in Tianjin, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, and step up the economic cooperation among the three places.

Cooperation among the customs areas can effectively lower the costs of logistics and improve the efficiency of the logistics industry, in particular between China, Mongolia and Russia.

Tianjin connects the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, and is the connecting point of the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor and the New Eurasian Continental Bridge. Tianjin Customs actively promotes the merging of these belts, roads and bridges by supporting the railway-sea multimodal transport.

Tianjin Customs handled 182,000 tons of cargo from January to July, up 50.4 percent year-on-year.

Xiao Jun, GAC's commissioner in Tianjin, said that the Memorandum of Cooperation instills a concept that the five customs areas should serve each other, and make joint efforts to promote the economic and trade development of the northeast, northwest and north China.