Economy

Quanzhou attracts investments with high quality service

By Wei Tian (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-09-09 11:19
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Cities wanting to attract investments will need more than just favorable tax and land policies, with improvements of industrial clusters and the establishment of supporting public services, said Quanzhou Party Secretary Xu Gang.

"Some investors consider more than just land price or taxes when selecting an area to invest in. And using these preferential policies alone to attract investment cannot be called a good investment environment," Xu said.

"Modern enterprises, especially foreign companies, place more value on industrial chains and industrial clusters in the region and the surrounding areas. So we have to step up efforts to establish a group of major industrial clusters to promote regional industrial development."

For the 11th consecutive year, Quanzhou ranked No 1 in Fujian province in gross industrial output. Last year, the city's output reached 487.6 billion yuan ($71.7 billion), with five companies reaching 10 billion yuan each and 925 enterprises reaching 100 million yuan each.

With the 12th Five-Year Plan starting next year, Quanzhou is striving to nurture more than 15 companies with outputs of 10 billion yuan each and five worth 100 billion yuan each. The city is looking to achieve 1 trillion yuan of fixed asset investment to achieve leapfrog development.

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In planning the industrial clusters, the textile and garment, footwear and petrochemical industries are set to exceed 200 billion yuan. Equipment manufacturing, building materials are expected to achieve 100 billion yuan.

Quanzhou is estimated to have about 300 billion yuan of private capital, with huge potential for investment. Xu suggested this week's China International Fair for Investment and Trade (CIFIT) should be used to accelerate the transformation of enterprises from "rough to intensive" to give private enterprises a "second start".

Xu said that as investment environments in most cities are similar, the attractiveness would depend more on public services conditions such as urban environment, transport convenience, logistics, personnel market and efficiency in government management.

Quanzhou ranks No 1 in Fujian in terms of road network density, with a highway mileage of 215 km. The city has two A-class ports with 67 berths, of which 16 are 10,000-ton class berths. The city is planning to extend its expressway mileage to 746 km, build 388 km of railways and actively promote the light rail construction.

Xu said the Quanzhou government has been improving service levels and wants more businesses to invest because of the city's high quality service and a complete industrial chain.