In the first quarter of this year (Q1), Hunan's total imports and exports with the countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) increased by 93.1% to 72.05 billion CNY, accounting for more than 40% of the total foreign trade in the province.

The Changsha Customs has rolled out several measures to serve Hunan's integration into the high-quality BRI development, including a total of 15 articles in 4 major areas. Efforts have been made to:

- Promote the "bonded zone-port area coordination" reform to better serve the opening up platforms construction;

- Strengthen BRI major industrial tax policy research and put forward targeted tax policy recommendations concerning the development needs of Hunan's advanced manufacturing industry, to advance trade stability and quality; and,

- Carry forward intensive customs clearance reform in the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan city cluster and continuously enhance foreign trade between Hunan and the BRI countries, to improve the customs' opening up and supervision capacity.

In recent years, Hunan and Africa have become increasingly closer in trade. There are now 3,071 enterprises engaged in foreign trade with Africa provincewide. Hunan's import and export volume to Africa reached 14.76 billion CNY in Q1, an increase of 82.6% year on year. Hunan has witnessed booming new foreign trade formats with African countries. In 2022, the province exported goods worth 2.44 billion CNY to Africa via market procurement trade, up 310%. Its barter trade grew by 8.6% to 2.417 million CNY.

During the 3rd China-Africa Economic and Trade Fair period, the Changsha Customs will release the China-Africa Trade Index and host the China-Africa Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Cooperation Forum. It is accelerating the building of the Technical Trade Measures Investigation and Research Center (Africa), which is the 2nd regional investigation and research center of the national customs after the one for ASEAN. Meanwhile, the customs has guided the Yuhua and Furong districts of Changsha City to respectively establish the China-Africa Technical Trade Measures Research and Review Base and the Plant Extracts Technical Trade Measures Research and Review Base, both of which are the first of its kind in China.