Rising demand for goods in overseas markets, high-tech trading of products, the Belt and Road Initiative and growing confidence will build a solid foundation for China’s foreign trade in 2017, Yu Guangzhou, minister of General Administration of Customs, said on Wednesday.

The country’s foreign trade rose by 20.6 percent in renminbi on a year-on-year basis in the first two months of 2017, data from GAC showed. China will further crack down on smuggling of foreign agricultural products this year to better safeguard the nation’s foreign trade, according to Yu.

The minister added the government will cut the time for cargo clearance by over 30 percent this year, as well as providing free mandarin lessons to dialect-speaking domestic business owners and their staff to raise the efficiency for customs procedures.