(Yicai Global) Jan. 25 -- The new three-year plan for integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta is still in the study phase and “will be issued by June,” Ma Chunlei, head of Shanghai’s development agency, said yesterday in an exclusive interview with Yicai Global.

The fifth session of the 15th Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress opened that same day. The eastern Chinese megacity will focus on integrating growth of the Delta with the penetration points of smoothness and connectivity throughout this year, Shanghai Mayor Gong Zheng said in the government work report he presented to the legislative assembly. The financial hub will also construct the Delta into a national high-level technological innovation cluster by formulating and implementing the new three-year plan for the region’s integrated development, Gong added.

The Delta region encompasses Shanghai and its neighboring Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Anhui provinces. It is the most economically-active and open region in China with the highest level of creativity. The proportion of its economic aggregate as against that of the entire country had risen to 24.16 percent by the end of the third quarter from 23.9 percent at the end of 2019, though the area only covers some 4 percent of China’s land area.

Shanghai aspires to be a key base where technological innovation originates and to break out of the limitations on the economy imposed by the existing administrative regions and develop these into functional areas in the next stage of Delta integration, said Ma, who is the director of the city’s Municipal Development and Reform Commission, adding Shanghai must also first pilot enhanced plans, rules, policies, institutions and laws and regulations to gain experience to replicate and promote nationwide.

China’s cabinet the State Council issued an outline of the integrated development of the Delta in December 2019, proposing to build it into a dynamic growth engine for China’s development, a national pacesetter of high-quality development, a pioneer zone in achieving overall modernization, a demonstration area for integrated regional development and a new eminence of reform and opening in the new era.

Editors: Xu Wei, Ben Armour, Xiao Yi