CHENGDU, Aug. 11 (NBD) -- While China's fixed-asset investment continued to slow down, the world's second largest economy's investment in logistics (including transportation, warehousing and postal industry) has grown by 9.5% year on year to 5.36 trillion Chinese yuan (about 804.3 billion U.S. dollars) in 2016.

Among China's 4 municipalities and 15 sub-provincial cities, Guangzhou ranked the first as its haulage volume in 2016 reached 1.12 billion tons, Chongqing (1.07 billion tons) and Shanghai (890 million tons) came the second and the third, respectively. In addition, the 2016 output value of transportation, warehousing and postal industry in Guangzhou and Shanghai amounted to 137.74 billion Chinese yuan (about 20.7 billion U.S. dollars) and 116.03 billion Chinese yuan (about 17.4 billion U.S. dollars), respectively.

The haulage volume in Tianjin, Chengdu, Wuhan, Ningbo, Nanjing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Qingdao and Xiamen stood above 250 million tons, while these cities are all capable of providing nationwide coverage for logistics.

In addition to the haulage volume and added value, statistics provided by JLL, a professional service and investment management company in the real estate sector, show that the area of high-standard logistics warehouse in Shanghai, Tianjin, Chengdu and Shenzhen reached 6.42 million square meters, 3.39 million square meters, 2.94 million square meters, and 2.90 million square meters by the second quarter of 2017, followed by Guangzhou and Beijing.

Last year, China's State Council approved an action plan, formulated by the National Development and Reform Commission, to promote the integrated development of transportation and logistics industries and reduce the costs of social logistics.

The plan sets as targets building an open and sharing transportation system of logistics by 2018, with a "one waybill" transportation system and a railway system covering over 80 percent of China's large ports and logistics parks.

The plan urges the government to optimize the space for transportation hubs and logistics links, make efforts to build major roads for container transport by 2020, and drive the construction of railways and highways for passengers and freight, respectively, in the Yangtze River and Pearl River Delta regions.

Email: lijia@nbd.com.cn