Helping companies to a rich New Year

On the first working day of 2020, Shanghai's Party Committee and government held their first conference focusing on optimizing the business environment, with emphasis on the matter for the third consecutive year.

According to the city's' Party Secretary Li Qiang, Shanghai will make every effort to create a more internationally competitive environment for investment and development.

"Government departments at all levels have undergone fundamental changes in their ideas over the past few years, while efficiency has been systematically improved and enterprises' sense of gain has increased."

The Tesla's factory in the new Lingang area of the FTZ the largest foreign-invested manufacturing project in Shanghai, delivered Model 3 in less than a year after construction began.

According to the city commission of economy and informatization, 20 specialist parks covering 3 to 5 square kilometers each, will focus on key industries such as integrated circuits, artificial intelligence and biomedicine.

The city issued the 3.0 version of its plan for the business environment in 2020 including a one-stop online platform for government services while strengthening, protecting and stimulating market entities.

Ma Chunlei, deputy secretary general and director of the Development and Reform Commission, said that Shanghai must learn from  Hong Kong and Singapore in offering government services.

In terms of construction permits, for instance, Shanghai will draw n Hong Kong's one-stop centers.

In improving corporate sense of gain, Shanghai has seen three key indicators of foreign investment growing at double-digit paces from January to November 2019 with 6,000 new foreign investment projects launched, up 29.3 percent; the contract value of foreign investment up by 14.6 percent; and paid-in foreign investment up 10.8 percent.