Workstations bring convenience to foreign-invested firms in city

 The Shenzhen Municipal Commerce Bureau recently presented accomplishments of 14 workstations, which were set up to protect the rights and interests of the city’s foreign-invested enterprises.

The 14 workstations are nonprofit organizations co-founded by the bureau and two Shenzhen-based business associations. They comprise two workstations at the municipal level, two at the district level and 10 in key industrial parks, where many foreign-funded firms are concentrated.

Service specialists working in key industrial park workstations provide specific solutions to practical difficulties foreign enterprises encounter in production and operation. These workstations are responsible for the firms in the park, as well as the neighboring ones.

“The preferential policies, intellectual property regulations and labor dispute arbitration are top problems foreign-invested companies inquire about. We also help them in terms of a factory’s rent and relocation, visa issues of expat employees entering or leaving China amid the pandemic and so on,” Liu Jin, a staffer in charge of the two municipal-level workstations, told Shenzhen Daily.

Sui Xinyuan, a service specialist with the Shenzhen Bay Eco-Technology Park workstation in Nanshan District, recalled a case in which a foreign-funded digital medical enterprise learned about the city’s supporting policies when the workstation staffers visited the firm and introduced the latest policies to them. “The company applied for a subsidy and successfully received 2 million yuan (US$308,800),” Sui said.

Meanwhile, a total of 12 law and policy publicity conferences have been held for all companies with overseas capital in Shenzhen which tackled issues about firms’ concerns such as taxation, customs clearance, foreign exchange and foreign capital management. Over 1,200 enterprise representatives attended offline and more than 30,000 people watched online, according to data provided by the bureau.

In the past year, many foreign firms enjoyed the workstations’ support regarding work, production resumption and vaccinations. “A foreign firm found it difficult to get its employees the second (vaccine) dose. The local workstation made a group appointment and rented a bus to take staffers to a designated vaccination site,” said Liu. As of now, the workstations have assisted 54 enterprises in this regard.

The latest data shows that from January to May this year, Shenzhen set up over 2,400 foreign-funded enterprises, absorbing more than US$12.4 billion in foreign investment. The city’s actual use of foreign investment exceeded US$3.1 billion with a year-on-year growth of 26 percent, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported.