Corridor to play bigger role

The magnificent view of freezing fog in Dapingtai mountainous area in Yichun, Heilongjiang Province. The ice-snow tourism industry in Heilongjiang Province takes the leading positions all over the country in resources development and scale. Yang Xinyue

As one of the most important measures to revitalize the old industrial base in China, Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province has launched a strategy to build an industrial corridor covering the province's major economic belts.

The Harbin-Daqing-Qiqihar industrial corridor has an initial area of 58.7 square kilometers, and 377 projects have began construction there already, of which high-tech projects account for over 65 percent.

The investment volume of the corridor areas reached 22.4 billion yuan so far, including 20 large-scale projects with investments of over 300 million yuan each.

Several industrial parks are being built along the corridor, like an automobile park, a mechanic electricity park and a fine chemicals park.

Heilongjiang is rich in mineral resources with relatively low costs of mining, making it a perfect place to run metallurgy businesses.

The industrial corridor is made up of Harbin, Daqing and Qiqihar, three central cities of Heilongjiang Province, and achieved initial success by the end of 2006.

According to the agreement signed with the Heilongjiang Provincial Government, 473 enterprises will set up operations in the corridor areas.

Based on the layout of the corridor, the three cities will rely on their industrial foundation, and science and educational resources to attract capital from home and abroad.

Most of the investment will go into equipment manufacturing, and petrochemicals, food, medical, high-tech and modern logistics industries.

 

As an incentive for investors, Heilongjiang Province put forward 29 articles of preferential policies related to four aspects land use, finance and tax, investment, and scientific and technological talents.

Harbin, Daqing and Qiqihar have strong economic basis; the region not only embraces sufficient supply of resources and energy, but also has rich labor resources.

Its construction is of great significance for Heilongjiang Province during the process of revitalizing the old industrial base.

Industrial structure adjustment and Stated-owned enterprises reform will also be benefited from the layout of the corridor.

The construction of the Harbin-Daqing-Qiqihar industrial corridor breaks the administrative precincts and incorporates the regional economy into one.

The new industrial corridor is expected to provide more and more business opportunities and inject new power into the development of Heilongjiang Province.

(China Daily 03/14/2007 page17)