The Alashankou Comprehensive Bonded Zone is located in Alashankou city of Bortala Mongol autonomous prefecture in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. It was set up in May 2011 after winning approval from the State Council, and was the first comprehensive bonded zone in Xinjiang and the sixteenth of its kind in the country. It started official operations in 2014.
Some 73 companies were newly registered in the bonded zone in 2018, bringing the total number of registered companies to 476. The import and export of the bonded zone rose 8.84 percent year-on-year to 3.2 billion yuan ($0.47 billion) in 2018, ranking first among the four comprehensive bonded zones in Xinjiang and 39th among all 65 in the country. The zone attracted 24 new investment projects last year with funding of 948 million yuan in place, accounting for 61.6 percent of the prefecture’s total. It handled 1.38 million tons of cross-border cargo, up 11.29 percent from a year ago. After gaining the qualification of a designated port for grain, livestock, germchit and meat, the bonded zone is seeking qualification for shipments of fruit and iced and fresh aquatic products and medicine.
The bonded zone will further improve the infrastructure of the cross-border e-commerce industrial park, promote cross-border e-commerce retail import and bonded tallying and launch online cross-border e-commerce by the end of this year. The bonded zone will also promote the establishment of the bonded future delivery bank for nonferrous metal, which can provide support for the actual transaction, financial settlement and processing of the metal ore. It also plans to accelerate the construction of a wood industrial park and a logistics center.