China’s Sichuan Airline Suspends Cargo Flights

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Beijing: China’s state-run Sichuan Airlines has suspended all its cargo flights to India for 15 days, causing major disruption to private traders’ efforts to procure the much-needed oxygen concentrators and other medical supplies from China despite Beijing offering “support and assistance” to the country to deal with the latest surge of Covid-19 cases.

The suspension of cargo flights came as a surprise to agents and freight forwarders who are frantically trying to procure the oxygen concentrators from China. There are also complaints of Chinese manufacturers jacking up the prices by 35 to 40 per cent. The freight charges have been increased to over 20 per cent, Siddharth Sinha of Sino Global Logistics, a Shanghai-based freight forwarding company.

India is struggling with a second wave of the pandemic with more than 3,00,000 daily new Covid-19 cases being reported in the past few days, and hospitals in several states are reeling under a shortage of medical oxygen and beds.

The Chinese cargo flights besides the shipping services have been operational throughout the pandemic rushing supplies of lucrative mobile phone equipment as well as a lot of other Chinese exports to India. Sinha also said the Chinese suppliers also resorted to “inhuman” practice of heavy jacking up of prices to cash in on the pandemic emergency.

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