Shanghai's FTZ sees a jump in projects funded from abroad

Shanghai's Free Trade Zone had 383 new foreign-funded projects last month involving an investment of $1.76 billion, up 2.1 times year-on-year, according to the city's commerce commission.

The number of new foreign-funded projects and their investment last month in the FTZ account for more than half of those in Shanghai.

The main fields of foreign investment were financial industry and trade.

In the first month of this year, Shanghai attracted 670 new foreign-funded projects, up 1.25 times year-on-year, and $3.32 billion in contracted investment, up 86.7 percent year-on-year. In January, the actual use of foreign fund kept a steady growth of 6.3 percent, hitting $1.16 billion.

The municipal commerce commission's statistics show that foreign capital started entering the finance-lease business in large amounts last month, a main booster for the growth of the financial-service industry.

Shanghai had 108 new foreign-funded financial-service projects in January, up more than five times year-on-year, and the contracted foreign investment was $1.04 billion, increasing 1.8 times year-on-year.

The contracted foreign investment in trade last month is $878 million, up 1.09 times year-on-year. The actual use of foreign capital in the service industry is $1.01 billion, up 2 percent, accounting for about 80 percent of the rise in the actual use of foreign capitals in Shanghai in January.

In addition, according to the commerce commission, Shanghai became the location for four more regional headquarters and two new investment companies of transnational enterprises in January.

By the end of last month, Shanghai had 494 regional headquarters for international enterprises, among which 27 are for the Asia-Pacific region, as well as 299 investment companies and 381 research and development centers of the global enterprises.

To date, all of the world's top 10 advertising companies, and 60 of the world's top 100 architecture design firms set up branches in Shanghai.

Half of the city's exhibition enterprises are foreign-funded.

The annual container-handling volume of Shanghai's port has been the largest in the world for five consecutive years.

Shanghai has been one of the most popular destinations in China for foreign capitals since the country's reform and open-up in late 1970s.