Launch of 54 more foreign-invested projects

A batch of 54 foreign-invested projects to be launched in Shanghai were signed on Wednesday.

Of the 54 projects, 15 are related to new infrastructure, covering various industries such as network technology, artificial intelligence, biomedicine and integrated circuits, while 10 projects involved investments of more than US$100 million each in areas such as commercial services, energy and finance. 

Three projects were launched by Global Fortune 500 companies.

Siemens Energy Co Ltd, for instance, increased its investment and further injected 3.8 billion yuan (US$543.3 million) in just six months after it's registered in the Shanghai Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone last year, making the company’s total registered capital now 4.1 billion yuan.

“Today, Shanghai has become the regional headquarters of Siemens Energy and the hub of Siemens Energy’s operation in China, carrying many key functions in the company’s value chain, such as corporate management, production, sales and innovation. It plays an important role in the global success of our company,” said Dieter Steinbrenner, senior vice president finance of Siemens Energy and finance director of Siemens Energy Co Ltd.

“From our recent large-scale capital increase to today’s signing of a strategic cooperation agreement with the Pudong New Area, these are important measures and strong proof that the two sides continue to deepen the mutually beneficial and win-win strategic partnership,” Steinbrenner said.

Davide Bruschi, general manager of Casappa Hydraulics Shanghai Co, said that the company, registered in the Pudong New Area in 2007, had seen annual revenue growing constantly since then, and is planning to invest more in China and set up regional headquarters in Shanghai as it regards it as one of its most important markets.

“We chose Shanghai for its superior environment for doing business and investment. Here you can easily set up a company, run a business successfully, and most importantly, you can find the right talent,” Bruschi said.

In the first six months of this year, Shanghai has seen the paid-in value of foreign investment totalling US$10.28 billion, an increase of 5.4 percent over the same period last year.

Among them, a total of 19 newly signed projects with an actual value of more than US$100 million each have in total contributed paid-in foreign investment of US$5.35 billion.

In the first half of the year, 26 regional headquarters of multinational enterprises and 10 research and development centers were set up in Shanghai, bringing the cumulative number of regional headquarters and R&D centers in the city to 746 and 471, respectively.

The steady growth of foreign investment during the period, despite the COVID-19 outbreak, was partly bolstered by 24 recently released measures on supporting the use of foreign investment in the city, which focused on four major aspects — expanding opening up, investment promotion, investment facilitation and investment protection.

Shanghai authorities have helped foreign-funded enterprises to ease their difficulties with visits paid to the regional headquarters of 720 multinational corporations, and 11 round tables on government-enterprise cooperation organized to coordinate the resolution of issues raised by enterprises.