The Municipal Government of Shanghai looks to further increase the cross-border trading volume by announcing new measures to improve the business environment at ports.

The new measures are in response to Shanghai’s water shipping ports’ need for increasing efficiency and lowering cost, and focus on optimization of cross-border trading procedures, application of more advanced technologies, service standardization and cost cut.

After the implementation of simplified and paperless process, time spent on customs clearance and related procedure in imports will be shortened to four hours on average.

“The new measures aim to improve Shanghai ports’ cross-border trading business environment to better serve the Yangtze River Delta region and China as a whole,” said Wu Wei, deputy director of Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce. He added that more than half of Shanghai ports’ throughput comes from the Yangtze River Delta region.

In World Bank’s last year index for business environment, China’ ranking rose from 97th to 65th among more than 190 economies globally, said Wu.