General

We have launched actions to stabilize foreign trade and improve the quality of foreign investment, support foreign trade enterprises to seize orders and expand the international trade market, increase the support for the introduction of foreign investment, and strengthen the service guarantee of major foreign investment projects... Since the Spring Festival, many places have made a series of arrangements to stabilize foreign trade and foreign investment, and launched targeted measures to strive to improve the quality and promote the quality on the basis of stable growth last year. All localities have stepped forward, which will effectively stimulate the vitality of the market, strive to maintain a "good start", and also lay a foundation for the stable volume and quality of foreign trade and foreign investment throughout the year.

Early efforts to attract investment and speed up

At 18:00 on February 1, the Zhejiang Provincial Investment Promotion Mission to Europe set out from the Provincial Department of Commerce and flew to the Czech Republic from Shanghai Pudong Airport in the early morning to start a 10-day two-way investment promotion trip covering the Czech Republic, Hungary and Germany. This is the first group for Zhejiang to "go out" to attract investment after the Spring Festival.

Unlike the "order grabbing" group before this year, this group is mainly composed of staff who are engaged in investment attraction and foreign economic liaison. They will publicize the advantages of investing in Zhejiang to European foreign-funded enterprises, such as good industrial foundation, large market potential, convenient transportation and logistics, and high talent concentration. They will also collect information and clues on foreign investment, and provide more reference for Zhejiang enterprises to enter Europe for development.

"This trip also hopes to give a good start for more than 200 groups in the province to go abroad for investment in the year, further set off the upsurge of large investment and business in the province, and enhance the confidence of multinational companies to invest in and settle in Zhejiang," said Li Yulin, a second-level researcher of the Investment Office of the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Commerce.

Not only in Zhejiang, but also in many places since the Spring Festival. On January 30, at the business theme roundtable of Guangzhou High-quality Development Conference, with the theme of "focusing on the investment promotion of industrial projects, making good use of the combination of foreign trade, foreign investment, outsourcing, foreign economy and foreign intelligence, and constantly creating a new pattern of opening up in Guangzhou", all departments stated that they would continue to carry out the "warm enterprise action", fully implement the policy of supporting enterprises and benefiting enterprises, help enterprises compete for funds and policies, one chain one policy One enterprise, one policy to solve practical difficulties and let enterprises keep their "roots" in Guangzhou.

In addition, Shanghai, Liaoning, Jiangsu, Guangdong and other places have taken stabilizing foreign trade and foreign investment as an important goal in the recent deployment of economic work in 2023, striving to continue to improve quality and promote excellence on the basis of stable growth in 2022. For example, the Shanghai Action Plan for Enhancing Confidence, Expanding Demand, Stabilizing Growth and Promoting Development, released by Shanghai on January 29, launched the actions of stabilizing and improving the quality of foreign trade and stabilizing the expansion of foreign capital stock, and proposed to support foreign trade enterprises to seize orders and expand the international trade market; Improve the support of foreign trade financial services such as foreign exchange hedging, cross-border RMB and foreign exchange revenue and expenditure facilitation, and ensure that the average time for handling normal export tax refund is within 5 working days; Research and encourage foreign enterprises to reinvest profits and other measures.

The confidence of enterprises with quick results has increased

It is noteworthy that these measures to stabilize foreign trade and foreign investment have further stimulated the confidence of enterprises in their development.

Nie Pingxiang, a researcher at the Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, analyzed that this round of local policies and measures to stabilize foreign trade and foreign investment are both coherent and targeted, and more service-oriented. She cited many ways to help foreign trade enterprises develop international trade market, optimize the layout of international trade market, and expand trade increment; Increase policy support for the introduction and capital increase of high-quality foreign-funded enterprises; Improve the customs clearance facilitation of foreign trade enterprises; Further improve the special shift mechanism for major foreign investment projects, strengthen the whole-process tracking service and all-round factor guarantee... These are all timely measures for the urgent needs of the current enterprise development. "The 'timely rain' of the policy will undoubtedly enable enterprises to reduce their burden and seek greater development."

For example, in view of the difficulties faced by enterprises, Kunshan Customs continued to optimize the list of key service enterprises, and established a "customs and enterprise liaison officer" mechanism with nearly 20 enterprises, such as Shishuo Electronics, Lizhen Technology, Wistron Capital, to accurately grasp the enterprise dynamics and needs, and provide targeted assistance with "one enterprise and one policy"; With regard to the problem of partial shortage of material supply and poor turnover of enterprises, Kunshan Customs has tailored the implementation rules of internal and external linkage under the supervision mode of the group's processing trade for enterprises to maximize the overall use of materials and parts, and designed the logistics circulation mode of "one area, multiple areas, and direct access to each area" to improve the efficiency of allocation, distribution, transportation and distribution of production materials and parts of enterprises.

"Thanks to a series of support measures from various departments such as the customs, we have the courage and determination to face the difficulties." Zheng Yong, the principal of the market business department of Shishuo Electronics (Kunshan) Co., Ltd., said that at the beginning of the new year, the company plans to further expand its production line and improve its capacity. It is expected to absorb more than 50000 labor reserves in the second half of the year and strive to achieve a net output value of 100 billion yuan.

Strong foundation boosts both quantity and quality

The early planning and quick implementation of policy measures is expected to win more initiatives for foreign trade and foreign investment to reach a higher level throughout the year. Pang Chaoran, an associate researcher of the Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce, said that all localities have moved forward with high enthusiasm and sufficient support measures to timely convey the strength and temperature of policies to the society, stabilize enterprise expectations and stimulate enterprise vitality.

Taking foreign investment as an example, Nie Pingxiang analyzed that at this stage, the core and foundation of stabilizing foreign investment in China is still the huge domestic market. Relevant departments will promote the sustained recovery of the domestic consumer market and promote a higher level of opening up as the focus of economic development this year, which will create better conditions for foreign enterprises to enter the domestic market. The local government has actively deployed various measures to provide a better investment environment for foreign-funded enterprises in terms of expanding access, optimizing policies and strengthening services, so as to implement the national policies as soon as possible and further enhance the confidence of foreign-funded enterprises in investing in China.

Pang Chaoran said that, on the whole, these arrangements will help to continue to stabilize the development base of China's foreign trade and foreign investment, cultivate new drivers of economic and trade development, expand new growth points of international trade and economic cooperation, and contribute to the overall improvement of domestic economic operation. "Looking forward to 2023, China's foreign trade and foreign investment development will face both challenges and opportunities. With early arrangements and efforts, we will strive to make a good start. At the same time, we will also lay a solid foundation for the stability of the scale and structure of foreign trade and the expansion of the stable stock of foreign investment throughout the year, and strive to reach a higher level on the basis of stable growth."