Forum bolsters pillar industry growth

A forum on construction industry development was held in Pingtan, Fujian province on Feb 21-23 as part of the city's broad push to advance that sector.

Pingtan is an island city located off the coast of Fujian and the closest place on the mainland to Taiwan.

Construction has long been a pillar industry for Pingtan. Statistics shows that about 70 percent of the tunnel-building projects across the country are undertaken by companies registered in the city. There are roughly 100,000 people from Pingtan involved in the industry.

In a bid to boost industrial growth, the local government established a special fund of 20 billion yuan ($3.1 billion) earlier last year and proposed a goal of lifting the scale of the construction industry to 30 billion yuan by 2020.

The forum, which was held for the first time, invited a number of experts, scholars and entrepreneurs in the sector to brainstorm, and is among the city's efforts to fuel the industry growth through attracting more construction talents or enterprises run by Pingtan natives to return to the city. That seems to be bearing fruits.

Lin Guohua, president of Jinji Heavy Machinery Co, a local native, shifted his business focus to Pingtan last year after noticing the great development potential in his hometown.

Pingtan is renowned for building tunnels in China and is also closely linked to Taiwan, Lin said, it has great market potential for construction industry development considering these factors.

"It is a duty to make some contribution to our hometown. Meanwhile we could also benefit a lot from the preferential policies targeting the construction enterprises rolled out by government," Lin added.

A three-day exposition of a great variety of construction facilities and machinery was also held on the forum sidelines. Over 50 renowned companies in the industry including Sany Heavy Industry Co, Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group and Caterpillar Ink. participated.