(Yicai Global) July 11 -- Organized by the Ningbo city government, China’s first charter flight for businesspeople since 2020 departed the east coast city yesterday bound for Budapest in Hungary.

Ningbo’s commerce bureau set up the round-trip for 36 representatives of companies with business overseas, The Paper reported today. Another charter flight to Milan in northern Italy is planned for this month.

The flights were arranged following a swift decline in orders compared with last year, the report said, citing the official who organized them. Ningbo’s commerce bureau wants to help local firms get more orders from in-person trips abroad, the official added. 

More than 40 percent of the almost 2,000 surveyed companies, whose annual imports and exports exceed USD10 million, reported a drop in export orders as of June 30, the person said.

Ningbo is an important trading hub. Last year, the city’s imports and exports tallied CNY1.19 trillion (USD177.4 billion). In the first five months of this year, that climbed by almost 12 percent to CNY514.4 billion (USD76.7 billion) from a year ago. 

Editors: Shi Yi, Emmi Laine, Xiao Yi