China to Build Commodity Trading Center in Caofeidian

China will beef up its Caofeidian pilot free trade zone, prioritizing the development of international commodities trade and bringing in more foreign investments, local government said on Monday.

The Caofeidian district, on the edge of China's top steelmaking city of Tangshan, aims to achieve trade volume of more than 50 billion yuan ($7.07 billion) and introduce 100 foreign projects by 2022, it said in a statement on its website.

The district also plans to make a commodities trading center in northeast Asia in early 2025 and to make China's northwestern provinces and Mongolia a key shipping hub, the statement said.

The government will speed up development of energy storage and distribution, supporting qualified companies to apply for crude oil import quotas and building storage facilities for crude oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and refined oil, it said.

Caofeidian in 2019 handled 370 million metric tons of cargo, up 2.8% from a year earlier, while imports and exports were valued at $2.05 billion.

($1 = 7.0714 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Min Zhang and Muyu Xu, Shivani Singh; editing by Jason Neely)