Region's economic reforms focus on high-end industry

By Yuan Shenggao | China Daily | Updated: 2017-10-19 07:15

Sichuan province has carried out a series of innovation-driven plans to boost economic growth in the past five years, especially in the high-end manufacturing industry.

Sichuan's annual GDP over the past five years has reached 3 trillion yuan ($462 billion), ranking No 6 nationwide.

The total assets of the province's financial industry exceed 9 trillion yuan, ranking No 1 in western China.

Last year, Sichuan's GDP came in at more than 3.2 trillion yuan, up 7.7 percent from 2015.

Relying on its fast economic pace, the province will focus more on industrial transformation and upgrading, as well as on supporting pillar industries such as information technology and auto manufacturing.

Li Shufu, CEO of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, said that the automaker has a prosperous future ahead in Sichuan and welcomes cooperation opportunities.

Region's economic reforms focus on high-end industry

"Sichuan is the main base for Geely to develop into an international automobile enterprise in the next five to eight years," Li said.

The two parties signed a 30-billion-yuan agreement on Sept 14, covering automotive culture promotion, core component production and training.

"In the past 10 years, Geely has implemented a range of plans by integrating global resources and coordinating its industrial strength under Sichuan's sound investment and development environment, and its flexible policy mechanism," Li said.

Geely has invested in 10 projects in Sichuan, pouring 100 billion yuan into the initiatives.

Huo Weidong, principal of Beijing Geely University, said that Geely has carried out its previous projects well with the support of the city and provincial governments, and the company has confidence in setting up its new initiatives in Chengdu.

The city is striving to establish itself as a national hub with a new development concept, by enhancing its influence in the global economy and attracting more high-quality projects, Huo added.

Sichuan is accelerating the development of high-end growth industries, such as the aviation and new-energy automotives.

The average annual growth of high-end growth industries in the city increased more than 15 percent between 2013 and 2016.

Part of the province's high-end emerging industries, the aviation and combustion engine industry plan to invest 10 billion yuan in 38 major projects launching this year.

By 2020, the economic scale of the industries will reach 150 billion yuan, according to the local authorities. The aim is to foster a developed layout with one base in Chengdu and three clusters in the nearby cities of Deyang, Mianyang and Zigong. Plans include constructing over 30 general aviation airports in the province.

In 2015, the Sichuan provincial government general office issued overall guidelines on developing five highlighted high-end growth industries from 2015 to 2020: energy conservation and environmental protection equipment, information security, the aviation and combustion engine industry, new energy automobiles and shale gas.

In the next five years, Sichuan province will further implement the Sichuan Action Plan alongside the Made in China 2025 strategy, optimizing the layout of high-end manufacturing industries, such as the new generation of information technology, aviation and combustion engine industry, transport and new energy automobiles.

It will also create a batch of emerging pillar industries, each billions of yuan in scale. The province will foster new economic industries, such as big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence.