(Yicai Global) June 17 -- The value of deals made at the third annual Shanghai Global Investment Promotion Conference rose 15.5 percent from last year.
Major industrial project deals worth CNY565.8 billion (USD97.5 billion) were signed at the conference and the launch ceremony for the ‘Ride the Wave of Rising Shanghai’ promotion season held in the city yesterday. That compared with CNY489.8 billion a year earlier.
Some 322 individual deals were done, up from 216 last year. The projects encompassed integrated circuits, biomedicine, artificial intelligence, high-end equipment and advanced materials.
“Many of the deals were reached through hard work online during the past one-to-two months of the pandemic,” said Zhang Hongtao, chief engineer at the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization.
Investment plays a key role in economic and social development as well as medium- to long-run recovery and stability, especially now that the pandemic is being brought back under control in Shanghai, Quan Heng, secretary of the Communist Party Committee at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told Yicai Global.
Quan added that the key factor is not the quantity of investment, but the quality of the economic development that it supports.
The Shanghai Global Investment Promotion Conference is an ideal platform for boosting the confidence of international investors in Shanghai along with their expectations for long-term development, Quan said.
At the launch ceremony, the city unveiled action schemes for the digital economy, low-carbon efforts, the metaverse and smart terminals.
The city's low carbon industry is expected to be worth more than CNY500 billion by 2025, with the metaverse and smart terminal sectors set to be over CNY350 billion and CNY700 billion, respectively.
The 'Ride the Wave of Rising Shanghai' promotion season, which lasts from the middle of this month to mid-August, will hold a series of events, including launches of major projects at the municipal and district levels, exhibitions of major projects and centralized issuance of local government bonds.
Editors: Xu Wei, Tom Litting
