China to survey warehousing industry for online portal

Starting from this year, the China Association of Warehouses and Storage (CAWS) will launch a three-year nationwide survey on the warehousing industry.The poll will survey 100 large- and medium-sized cities, and the data collected will be used to set up an online information portal on the nation's warehouses. The first cities to take part in the survey will be Beijing and Shanghai, according to comments made by the Secretary General of the CAWS, Sun Jie, speaking at a recent warehousing industry conference, cited by Xinhua News Agency. The poll will then be expanded to include all municipalities and provincial capitals in 2007 and, hopefully wrapped up in 2008. At present, there are 10,177 companies that offer warehousing services in China with total assets worth CNY257.8 billion (US$32.9 billion). However, critics complain that most of these companies are small and not particularly profitable.