Pudong unveils ambitious plans to optimize business environment

Shanghai's Pudong has announced ambitious plans to optimize its business environment and attract more companies to invest and take root in the new area.

"The Pudong Investment Promotion Year" program was launched recently at an investment promotion conference.

This year, marking the 35th anniversary of Pudong's development and opening-up, the new area aims for high-quality economic growth. It intends to maintain an annual economic growth rate above 5 percent, higher than that of Shanghai overall.

The annual investment scale of major construction projects is expected to reach 169.2 billion yuan (US$23.22 billion), and newly launched projects are targeted at 298 billion yuan.

To improve the business environment, Pudong will fully implement various tasks of Version 3.0 of the Regulations of Shanghai Municipality on Optimizing the Business Environment and Version 8.0 of the Action Plan for Optimizing the Business Environment.

The Version 8.0 action plan was released a day before Pudong's investment conference. A regular move since 2018, the new version boasts 58 new reform initiatives that aim to make it easier for enterprises to do business in Shanghai. Nineteen relevant units in Pudong have signed letters of responsibility and made solemn commitments around the work goals of high-quality development.

The new area has introduced 10 measures to boost high-quality development. They cover aspects such as promoting consumption, driving innovation, strengthening the industrial ecosystem, enhancing legal protection and improving people's well-being.

It has also announced five actions with 17 measures to improve investment promotion services. These focus on the industrial ecosystem, industry-specific promotion, enterprise services, resource aggregation, and strengthening the investment promotion team. It will give full play to the advantages of the "1+38+X" work system and guarantee investment promotion work in Pudong.

At the conference, representatives from Gilead, Carl Zeiss, Shanghai Branch of China Construction Bank, Shanghai Data Exchange and Lujiazui Group shared insights on aspects such as the business environment, financing for small and micro enterprises, development of data elements and urban renewal. They expressed their firm confidence in Pudong's future prospects, highlighting its potential as a hub for business growth, innovation and sustainable development.

A significant highlight of the conference was the signing ceremony for 33 projects worth over 130 billion yuan, covering the five fields of urban renewal, infrastructure, key industries, financing services for small and micro enterprises and the valorization of data factors.

Among them are six urban renewal projects, such as the comprehensive development of the Sanchagang Wedge Green Space, known as the "Gateway to Shanghai," and the transformation of the shantytown in Heqing, which have a combined investment of over 90 billion yuan.

Six infrastructure projects, including Metro Line 19 and the ecological green land construction project in the Beicai wedge green space, have a total investment of nearly 35 billion yuan.

Seven key industrial projects, such as the headquarters and super training plant of AgiBot, a leading developer of embodied intelligence robot products; and the China headquarters and smart supply chain hub base of South Korea's Sinokor Merchant Marine, have a total investment of 5.5 billion yuan, highlighting the strong momentum of Pudong in cultivating new quality productivity.

Eight banks signed agreements to provide loans ranging from 3 million yuan to 11.95 million yuan to eight small and micro enterprises to support their development.