Guizhou expands distribution channels for specialties

To lower the negative impact on agricultural product sales brought by the novel coronavirus, Southwest China's Guizhou province is exploring the market to attract more distributors to buy and sell the products to other provinces.

During the past year, the sales volume of Guizhou's agricultural products was 32 billion yuan ($4.6 billion), an increase of 8.3 percent, which increased the income of impoverished people.

According to Guizhou's government work report of this year, the province plans to establish planting bases to provide agricultural products to cities in East China, such as Shanghai, and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

A large scale of agricultural product transportation requires storage capacity and convenient traffic networks. Currently, Guizhou has established 722 cold storage facilities that can store 1.21 million metric tons of agricultural products.

In addition, the Guizhou Provincial Department of Commerce launched 70 agriculture-commerce integrated projects. It also plans to construct 120 agricultural product distribution centers for production, transportation, and marketing.

Since every county was connected with expressways in 2015, Guizhou completed the construction of 78,700 kilometers of roads to provide access to all its villages last year.

Guizhou has been focusing on both domestic and international markets to match the agricultural products with demand. Taking poverty alleviation as an opportunity, Guizhou has carried out series of promotion events in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Abroad, Guizhou has realized agricultural product exports to countries and regions involved in the Belt and Road Initiative. As the first specialized China Express Railway train deported in January, the transportation time to reach the Beibu Gulf was shortened to one day.