New firms and updated transport network put city on investment map

Zhanjiang, an emerging city in South China's Guangdong province, is to catch rising investment opportunities with improved administrative services and better ecological environment.

The local government issued a comprehensive reform plan on optimizing the business environment in July.

This includes measures to improve the commercial system, a management system for corporate investment, legal system and arrangements for trade assistance.

The market supervision department pledged to further simplify the procedure for setting up company registration and enhance the use of e-channels to save time for companies.

It now takes just two days to fulfill all the procedures for a new company in Zhanjiang, according to the department.

Companies and industrial associations have been invited to participate in the drafting of the local regulations, said the justice department of Zhanjiang. It reviewed the normative documents regularly, abolishing the outdated and revising documents.

It also set up a strict mechanism to ensure the transparency and justice of law enforcement.

The customs department said it cut the overall clearance time for imports to less than 40 hours in the first half of this year. This is down nearly 60 percent from the level of 2018. It is working on new measures to further reduce the clearance time, cut costs and launch guarantees for trade companies, said the customs department.

According to official figures, the number of newly registered market entities surged 22.7 percent year-on-year to 50,000. The new foreign-funded companies rocketed 6.5 times to 143 in 2018. The city was selected as one of the top 50 cities in China with the most investment potential.

Chen Hongwen is an economic researcher with a Party school in Zhanjiang.

He said the investment from a group of transnational companies, including BASF, a world-leading chemical company, indicated that the business environment of the city has greatly improved.

It also shows that the market is increasingly attractive and dynamic.

He attributed the positive achievements mainly to the transport upgrades and optimization of the industrial foundation, according to a report by Zhanjiang Daily.

The city joined the high-speed railway network last year. It is designed to be a national transport hub in the next five years.

This will connect it to Southwest China, the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province and Hainan province, which is separated from Zhanjiang by the Qiongzhou Strait, said Chen. "Zhanjiang is fully capable to become a sub-center of Guangdong province," he noted.

Despite the fast development, data from the Department of Ecology and Environment of Guangdong indicated that the overall air quality of Zhanjiang ranked first in the province from January to August this year. The PM 2.5 index stood at 25.