Hong Kong reviews river trade permit fees as Delta cargo drifts to mainland ports

Hong Kong is reviewing the permit fees it charges river trade vessels after arrivals from the Pearl River Delta fell from 4,344 in 2023 to 3,519 last year, a drop of 19% that strips roughly 110,000 teu of container volume from the territory's Kwai Tsing terminals in two years.

The review, confirmed by secretary for transport and logistics Chan Mei-po in a written reply to the Legislative Council on Wednesday, targets the fees China-flagged vessels pay to shuttle containers between Pearl River Delta ports and Hong Kong, where the boxes are transferred to ocean-going ships. River-borne cargo is not a marginal business: laden container movements between Hong Kong and mainland China account for more than 40% of the territory's annual laden container throughput.

Why is Hong Kong moving now?

The trigger is competition from the mainland. Ports in Guangzhou and Shenzhen offer inland waterway operators financial subsidies and, in a move with immediate operational appeal, exemptions from mandatory pilotage requirements. Hong Kong's counter is currently a multiple-entry permit scheme that lets an operator make up to 10 port entries in a month for the price of five single entries — an arrangement the industry colloquially calls "buy five, get five free."

The territory's broader blueprint, the Action Plan on Maritime and Port Development Strategy, proposes measures to reinforce Hong Kong's role as a regional transhipment hub. Ms Chan said: "The Action Plan on Maritime and Port Development Strategy proposes various measures to strengthen Hong Kong's position as a regional transhipment hub, including reviewing the permit fees charged to river trade vessels in order to maintain the competitiveness and attractiveness of the port to the industry. We have completed a preliminary review and are now discussing the matter with relevant departments, with the details to be released in due course."

Note what that statement does not contain: no revised fee level, no timeline, no decision on whether the multiple-entry discount will be restructured. A preliminary review and inter-departmental discussions leave shippers and barge operators without a basis to price 2027 routings. The promise of competitiveness is, for now, a promise.

How fast is the river trade shrinking?

The decline predates the review and has been steady rather than sudden. Vessels calling mainly at Kwai Tsing Container Terminals carried:

• 2023: 4,344 arrivals handling 1.63m teu
• 2025: 3,519 arrivals handling 1.52m teu
• First seven months of 2026: 2,101 arrivals handling 878,000 teu

The 2026 run-rate annualises to roughly 3,600 arrivals and about 1.5m teu, which suggests the slide in box volumes is flattening even as the longer-term trend points down. Each arrival averaged about 418 teu in 2026, against 375 teu in 2023 — barge loads are getting heavier even as sailing counts fall.

What does it mean for carriers and shippers?

For barge operators and forwarders routing Delta factory cargo through Hong Kong, the fee review is the first signal that the government recognises the cost gap with mainland terminals. If permit fees fall, the economics of transshipping via Kwai Tsing improve for cargo from Dongguan, Foshan and other manufacturing centres upriver; if the review stalls, expect further diversion to Nansha, Yantian and Shekou, where subsidies and pilotage waivers already cut the cost and friction of a river call.

For ocean carriers, the stakes are Hong Kong's remaining feeder base. The territory handled 12.99m teu in 2025, down 5.1% year on year — a figure that extends a decades-long slide from the era when Hong Kong ranked among the world's three busiest container ports, before mainland infrastructure upgrades and surging Chinese exports let Shenzhen and Shanghai overtake it.

For mainland ports, the dynamic is straightforward: every barge that skips Hong Kong is volume their own deep-water berths capture directly, with subsidy regimes accelerating a shift the cargo might have made anyway.

What comes next?

The details of the revised fee structure — the number that matters to every operator on the river — will be released "in due course," according to Ms Chan. Until the government publishes the revised tariff and clarifies whether pilotage or entry rules change alongside it, the trajectory points one way: mainland subsidies pulling Delta cargo west and north, and Hong Kong's river trade volumes continuing to erode unless the new fees close the gap.