Binhai vows more financial support for smart manufacturing

Tianjin's Binhai New Area recently announced that it will offer more credit support for development of intelligent manufacturing.

The announcement came as Binhai strives to promote deep integration of the internet, big data, artificial intelligence and the real economy in pursuit of its strategic "Greater Intelligence" deployment, according to the local government.

Binhai will take full advantage of the government-sourced funds, such as the Haihe Industrial Fund and Binhai New Area's industrial development fund to attract social capital to launch investment funding for intelligent manufacturing and support the high-quality enterprises and key projects in the sector.

It will also innovate financial support and expand credit to guide financial institutions' involvement in key projects featuring cutting-edge technology and broad market prospects.

In 2019, the local government rolled out an action plan for accelerating the high quality growth of Binhai New Area, vowing that the area would become a world-class innovation center driven by intelligent manufacturing.

With that goal in mind, Binhai joined hands with China Traffic Construction Group among others and launched a30 billion yuan ($4.25 billion) fund to support the development of the intelligent technology industry.

The fund was expected to facilitate cooperation among global intelligent engineering technology centers and Binhai's Sino-German Industry 4.0 intelligent manufacturing center, its integrated circuit center, automotive electronics and automated driving center, and intelligent transportation center.

An industrial development fund was also established to support intelligent technology, biomedicine, new energy and new materials, aerospace, and equipment manufacturing. It is expected to reach 100 billion yuan within five years.

So far, the IC design companies in Binhai have received financial support totaling 90.45 million yuan from a special Binhai New Area fund. By the end of 2019, Binhai had housed 2,206 national high-tech enterprises, 2,049 national small and medium-sized sci-tech firms; 488 municipal research and development institutes, 129 key laboratories, 111 engineering centers and 254 enterprise technical centers.