Shanghai lockdown snarls world’s busiest port, China supply chains

Shanghai lockdown snarls world’s busiest port, China supply chains

SHANGHAI: Shanghai’s grinding coronavirus lockdown is slowly clogging China’s supply chains, as delays hit the world’s busiest container port where staff are tangled in a morass of COVID controls. Beijing has refused to tack away from its strict zero-COVID strategy that has protected its public health system through the pandemic but at a mounting economic cost. China’s financial hub Shanghai-home to multinational firms and its busiest port-has been sealed off almost entirely for a week following an outbreak fuelled by the Omicron virus variant.

That has forced many companies to halt production and slow new projects, factories told AFP, while those still operating are struggling with a shortage of truck drivers on top of onerous permit and Covid testing requirements. At Shanghai’s port, the lack of drivers and other workers means getting goods in and out is increasingly hard. The docks are working normally with a “single-digit” number of vessels waiting to berth, Shanghai International Port Group said this week. “But the fact is… due to restrictions caused for truck drivers, it is not really operating,” Bettina Schoen-Behanzin, vice president of the EU Chamber of Commerce’s Shanghai Chapter, told AFP.

“The figure I heard is that… week-on-week volumes at the Shanghai port are down