West Coast New Area focuses on marine finance

As Qingdao strives to develop its financial industry, its newly formed West Coast New Area is launching innovative policies and strategies to bolster financial operations and drive new growth for its economy.

Last June, the State Council, China's Cabinet, approved the establishment of the new area in Huangdao district.

"The new area is determined to develop itself to be the test field and demonstration area for Qingdao's wealth management pilot reform, and provide financial support for the real economy and marine development in the area," said Wang Jianxiang, Party chief of Huangdao.

The new area, at the west side of Jiaozhou Bay, covers 2,096 square kilometers of land and about 5,000 sq km of ocean. City authorities expect it will be ranked third, in terms of annual gross product, among China's 10 national new areas, after Tianjin Binhai New Area and Pudong New Area in Shanghai.

Wang said wealth management and the financial sector will play a vital part in helping the area to achieve its goal of reaching gross product of 500 billion yuan ($81.9 billion) in 2020, and to ensure the output of the marine industries will rise by 15 percent annually.

"With the development of the financial industry, we are confident that the new area will build itself into another main body of the city of Qingdao in five to 10 years," he said.

The district government has set aside 50 million yuan from public expenditure annually to reward financial institutions that register companies and operate in the new area.

The incentives range from 1 million to 10 million yuan for each company based on their registered capital, scale and level.

Currently, 123 financial institutions operate in Huangdao, with 49 in the banking industry and 62 securities and insurance firms.

The People's Bank of China Qingdao Branch launched 12 financial measures to support the new area's development. The measures were created through credit scales, financing models, investment facilitation and payment system buildup.

A total of 103 projects with a combined investment of 107 billion yuan in the West Coast New Area were presented to 33 bank institutions in Qingdao for financing support requests.

To boost momentum of fast growing startups that aspire to thrive in the new area, the West Coast Small and Micro Enterprise Financing Platform was founded in July 2014, with a loan loss provision worth 150 million yuan.

The district government is also considering a city commercial bank to provide more financial momentum for the new area's marine operations. The bank has attracted five major shareholders and its planning is underway. "As the forefront of Qingdao's marine economy, ocean-related financial activities are also the new area's key focus. This includes marine insurance, offshore finance, ship leasing and financing and shipment financial derivatives," said Wang.

The new area will encourage marine-related companies to go public and it is ramping up efforts to build the Qingdao Ocean Property Exchange, which will focus on property transfer in island land tenure, marine mineral resource development and oceanic intellectual property.

huqing@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 05/25/2015 page12)