By Yuling Chen, EDITOR

What remarkable results have China (Pilot) Free Trade Zone, hereinafter referred to as CFTZ, achieved?

China (Pilot) Free Trade Zone remarkable results

On November 16, the Chongqing Municipal Commission of Commerce held a press conference to inform the construction of the CFTZ. Overall, it has achieved remarkable results, with 122 items of 151 reform pilot tasks implemented and the rest 29 items being actively promoted. By the end of October 2018, 1,605 projects had been introduced into CFTZ, with a total amount of contracts (agreements) of RMB 484.814 billion.

Chongqing Yangtze River Bridge (Photo by Ju Zhiqin)

According to the relevant principle of the Chongqing Municipal Commission of Commerce, in terms of institutional innovation, at present, there are 34 supporting documents and more than 500 supporting measures in CFTZ. It has nurtured and formed 13 typical innovative cases, 34 institutionally innovative results, including 6 nationally pioneer cases, and 11 nationally pioneer innovative results.

Chongqing's efforts toward business environment

Chongqing continues to insist on optimizing the business environment in CFTZ. Currently, 33 municipal-level economic management authorities have been decentralized to sub-districts, business entities registration has been well received by enterprises.

In addition, Chongqing actively promotes the pilot reform of “integration of multiple certificates into one” and “separation of business license and business certificate”, and makes efforts in market access.

Financial openness and innovation is also an important field for CFTZ to achieve practical results. It takes the lead in launching the logistics finance innovative pilot and rolling out the new products of supply chain financing for international overland trade in the country.

Through optimizing cross-border revenue and expenditure management, and improving cross-border settlement efficiency, the costs of enterprise manpower and capital are saved by more than 70%. In the expanded cross-border investment and financing sector, the corporate foreign debt inflows have maintained a historically high level, with average financing cost falling by 0.5%.

China (Chongqing) Pilot Free Trade Zone with initial industrial agglomeration effect

Through a series of measures, the China (Chongqing) Pilot Free Trade Zone has also initially shown the industrial agglomeration effect.

In the field of intelligent industry, SenseTime Technology Artificial Intelligence and other landmark projects have been landed. The Singapore Raffles Medical Group wholly-owned hospital is settled as a breakthrough in the medical field. In the gradually growing aviation industry, the United States AAR, Singapore STARCO, Guangzhou GAMECO, and other vehicle maintenance and repair enterprises are settled here. In terms of gradually expanded finance and education fields, it has not only established the first Sino-foreign joint venture securities company and joint venture medical insurance institution but also introduced overseas educational institutions such as the Stony Brook School in the United States.

Source: Chongqing Municipal Commission of Commerce