2,000 foreign-funded firms set up in city in H1

 Nearly 2,000 foreign-invested companies were set up in Shenzhen in the first half of the year, attracting approximately US$8 billion of contractual foreign investment, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported Saturday.

The actual use of foreign capital exceeded US$4 billion from January to June this year in the city, an increase of 5 percent year on year.

Optimistic about the vitality of sci-tech innovation and the advantages of industrial chain agglomeration, ABB Group, a Swiss-Swedish multinational corporation, opened an innovation center in Shenzhen at the end of last year.

The center focuses on the development of core areas including artificial intelligence, cloud services, cybersecurity, intelligent building and other core areas, and promotes the application of global intelligent building solutions.

“The open and excellent industrial investment environment and the government’s proactive investment policy have made ABB and Shenzhen closely linked with each other,” said Zhao Yongzhan, senior vice president of ABB China.

Most of the newly established foreign-funded enterprises set up in Shenzhen in the first half of this year belong to the service industry, according to the city’s commerce bureau.

By the end of June this year, Shenzhen had approved a total of 94,000 foreign direct investment projects involving US$296 billion of contractual investment. The total amount of foreign capital that has been utilized had amounted to US$117.8 billion.

The fact that foreign-funded companies keep coming to Shenzhen in large numbers is a clear demonstration of the city’s good business environment, said the Daily.

According to Qualcomm’s innovation center in Shenzhen, the city has attached great importance to the establishment of the center at the time it was set up, not only providing support in terms of site selection, but also financial subsidies that could effectively reduce the company’s operating costs.

In July, Shenzhen released a series of measures to promote high-quality development of foreign investments to help foreign businesses get through this challenging time.

To improve services, Shenzhen will formulate a comprehensive service mechanism to maintain communications with foreign businesses and understand their difficulties in resuming businesses.

With the mechanism, the city will be able to understand foreign-funded enterprises’ basic information including the progress on returning to work, rate of employee return, capacity utilization and turnover.

Efforts will be made to attract more foreign investment to fields such as advanced manufacturing, emerging industries and cutting-edge technologies. Foreign-invested companies will be encouraged to participate in government procurements in a fair way.

Channels will be opened for suppliers to address complaints and issues.