By Rui Hu, iChongqing News

Chongqing-  Chongqing has continuously improved the level of investment liberalization and facilitation, actively promoted institutional reform and innovation in investment service, which has accelerated the benign gathering of various emerging industries. 

The data shows that since the establishment of the FTZ two years ago, the city has received 22,054 new enterprises registered, accounting for 9.7% of the city's total. The registered capital is RMB231.768 billion, accounting for 19.4% of the city's total. There are 419 new foreign-funded enterprises among them, accounting for 24.9% of the city. The registered capital of USD2.609 billion, accounting for 15.2% of the city. Additionally, there are 1677 projects were introduced, and the total contract (agreement) is worth RMB526.935 billion.

Foreign projects are subject to localized management

In terms of the concept of “bringing in” foreign investment, based on institutional innovation, FTZ explored investment system reform. By implementing the pre-entry national treatment plus a negative list management system for foreign investment, the “Special Management Measures for Foreign Investment Access in the Free Trade Zone (Negative List)”, according to the “Comprehensive Filing + Limited Approval” model, is not included in the negative list. All foreign-funded projects are subject to localized management. Fully implement online processing of foreign investment projects has achieved the online operation of project management and real-time query of information.

At the same time, FTZ gradually relaxes the access restrictions to ensure that the establishment of enterprises is free and convenient. In the past two years, the city has further reduced barriers to entry in the fields of education, medical care, and finance in order to speed up their opening. Raffles Hospital (Singapore), Amey Bear Children Hospital, Union Medical Healthcare (Hong Kong), Chongqing Shida Dental (Korea, Hong Kong & Chongqing) and other medical groups are brought in Chongqing. Besides, United Asia Finance, CMIA Capital Partners Pte. Ltd., and other foreign financial companies came to Chongqing. FTZ also supported Stony Brock School (U.S.), Yew Chung International School of Chongqing accept foreigner’s children registration and satisfy the need for children of oversea's talents to attend school.  

 

Innovative service reform

Currently, in the process of enterprise registration, electronic registration, self-checking, simple cancellation of market entities, multi-certification and one-on-one code can be easily done within FTZ. In the industrial and commercial registration procedures, the online approval number has accounted for more than 70% of the total.

On the basis of the "Twenty-four Certificates Simplified to One" officially implemented throughout the country, 7 more licenses added into“Thirty-one Certificates Simplified to One” has been implemented in Chongqing. FTZ pushed the separation of licenses and certificates of 100 administrative licensing items in accordance with direct cancellation of approval, examination and approval, filing of notifications, implementation of notification commitment system, optimization of access services, etc. in order to solve the problem of the approval of entry but no operation after foreign company`s establishment.

The innovative service method has further improved the efficiency of the online service. According to reports, the current online project platform for investment projects has completed the connection with the regional identification system of FTZ. It can automatically identify the basic “identity” of the investment projects submitted by the enterprise, such as whether the address is within the scope of the free trade zone. The service system can quickly classify and process - which has greatly improved the efficiency of business approval.

Jiulongpo District provides the best services

Jiulongpo district is one of the FTZ in Chongqing, which benefits from the services innovations. It provides featured service for foreign investment by offering the Handbook and Service Guide for the free trade zone in both Chinese and English version. Issues involving district-level can be addressed with district office; issues involving municipal-level and above would be appealed on time. It will support the administration service, culture & arts exports, and a platform for enterprise information big data is under construction. It will optimize the business environment based on a better service platform, and help foreign companies reduce the procedures of administration; it will track the problems of new landing enterprises and the problems of stock enterprises. Jiulongpo district aims to shorten the time for the approval of newly established enterprises in the market access segment, which has greatly improved administrative efficiency.

A new open-up platform in Liangjiang New Area

New open-up potentiality is formed by the innovative measures of 4+N in Sino-Singapore Demonstration Projects, as access fastening, platform building and the introducing of major projects. Liangjiang New Area has built the Raffles Hospital as the first foreign-owned hospital in west China. It combines high-end medical care with medical insurance and introduced direct insurance payment. It plans to build a medical service that integrates “foreign hospitals + medical insurance + foreign medical insurance” together.

Liangjiang New Area co-constructed the National University of Singapore (Chongqing) Research Institute with the National University of Singapore, which focuses on the key strategic research areas of modern logistics, financial and financial risk management, information engineering and technology, advanced manufacturing and materials. This program helps to promote the top ten strategic emerging industrial development of Liangjiang New Area. Besides, there are international industrial parks in cooperation with Japan, Italy, German, Korea, and Swiss.

The establishment of the Liangjiang International Cooperation Center and the establishment of an international cooperation public service platform integrating government affairs, production, life, and talent services via the introduction of national chambers of commerce, industry associations, Foreign Service Agencies, headquarters enterprises, etc. The international cooperation platform focuses on display centers and operation service centers to create an international exchange linkage window with frequent international economic and trade activities, information gathering of foreign companies, technical display of foreign products, complete comprehensive services, and prominent international image identification.

More convenient in Shapingba district

Initially, Shapingba district has pushed the reform of the system and renewed the service in a more convenient way. In Shapingba district of the Pilot Free Trade Zone, the “41 Certificates simplified to  One” was implemented to shorten the administrative examination and approval time by more than half. Shapingba also actively promote the electronic registration of electronic registration and electronic business licenses. It strengthened cooperation among relevant government departments, provided policy and system guarantees for online identity authentication, electronic signatures, and electronic archives, and vigorously promoted the online registration. Shapingba will fully implement the simple cancellation system for enterprises and individual industrial and commercial households, and impose restrictions on access to high-risk industries such as investment; for industries with overcapacity and environmental pollution, access is strictly prohibited, and registration is not allowed.

 

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