Investment in focus for Shanghai this year

Shanghai will step up efforts to attract more investment into the city in order to stabilize economic growth and optimize its economic structure, city officials said at a news conference on Wednesday.

To nurture new growth engines and achieve high-quality development, Shanghai will hold a series of promotional activities from February to June, said Gu Jun, director of Shanghai Municipal Development and Reform Commission.

This is the third consecutive year that the city is organizing such investment-oriented promotions.

Gu explained that this year's promotional activities will better coordinate with the major national strategies assigned to Shanghai, such as building Pudong New Area into a showpiece of socialist modernization and the construction of Hongqiao International Open Hub.

Shanghai will further improve its business environment so that companies based in the city feel a greater sense of gain. The city took a major step forward on Sunday, the first workday after the Spring Festival holiday, with the municipal government releasing the new action plan made up of 150 tasks and measures to further improve its business environment, said Gu.

Equal importance will be attached to industrial investment and private investment, as they will help to improve Shanghai's competitiveness and market vitality. The sectors worth investing in and convenient investment channels will be demonstrated to private enterprises, added Gu.

Outreach programs will be another highlight of this year's investment promotion activities, Zhu Yi, deputy director of Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce, said at the news conference. While strengthening ties with developed markets, which have been important sources of foreign investment, Shanghai will also explore opportunities in emerging markets, she said.

Shanghai will attach more importance to well-established overseas exhibitions and important international economic and trade conferences, including the industrial trade fair Hannover Messe 2024, the London Tech Week and the China-California Business Forum. The city will also hold international industrial park promotion conferences in Chile and Brazil. Consumption, Silk Road e-commerce and urban redevelopment will be the major cooperation themes with Hong Kong and Singapore. There will also be investment promotion activities for sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East, she said.

Shanghai held more than 50 investment promotion activities in overseas markets last year. The city attracted 6,017 newly registered foreign-invested companies, up 38.3 percent year-on-year, added Zhu.

More investment should be guided to new infrastructure construction in Shanghai this year, said Chen Guozhong, deputy director of Shanghai Municipal Development and Reform Commission. The municipal government has already set 56 major tasks to be advanced this year concerning the construction of new networks, computing power, data, facilities and devices.

This year, the city will build 13,000 new 5G base stations, 20 million new sensors, 10,000 public charging piles, eight hydrogen refueling stations and photovoltaic power generation terminals with 1 million kilowatt capacity. To better reach these goals, Shanghai will continue to introduce interest discount policies with more preferential interest rates, said Chen.

In general, the various government policies and financing tools, such as local government special bonds and infrastructure real estate investment trusts, should be better used to further stimulate investment, added Chen.