As a result, imports may take up to 90 days to clear from approximately 30 days in advance, two traders said on condition of anonymity.
Three coal traders said that the backlog meant fewer import tenders from customers-mostly utilities in eastern and southern China.
“There are only sporadic cases reported on import denial at this moment. But the market consensus is that more ports may strictly implement the quota policy,” one of the traders said.
Authorities seek to support struggling domestic coal miners, and analysts expect imports to fall by as much as a quarter in the second half of the corresponding period in 2019.
Traders at the ports of Fuzhou and Guangzhou reported delays in processing and lengthy document inspections at the ports of Fuzhou and Guangzhou.
The port of Fuzhou declined to comment and the port of Guangzhou could not be asked for comment.
“Due to the coronavirus pandemic and relevant coal policies this year, coal imports are more stringent across the country. Coal purchase has been greatly affected in our company as we do not have an import quota,” Jiangxi Xinyuan Fuel Corp, a coal trading subsidiary of government-backed State Power Investment Corp (SPIC), said in a statement on Tuesday this week.
A Fuzhou port official also said that the General Customs Office had set import quotas for utilities and that the port authority had refused entry for certain shipments which did not comply with quotas.
“I don’t know how or when exactly the quotas were set, but they were lower than previous years and seemed insufficient,” said the official, who is not allowed to speak to the media.
The port of Fuzhou will not require the mooring of a cargo chartered by a power utility that surpassed its import quota of 1.2 million tons in 2020, said the port official of Fuzhou. Previously, the company imported more than 2 million tons of coal annually.
The General Administration of Customs did not respond immediately to a request for comments.
China’s coal imports totalled 148.71 million tons in the period January-May, up 16.8% year-on-year.
