On the morning of April 4th, Shanghai Municipal Government Information Office held the first press conference of the theme series of "Creating a First-class Business Environment Service and Building a New Development Pattern". Hua Yuan, Vice Mayor of Shanghai Municipal Government, attended and introduced "Several Policies and Measures to Promote the Stable Scale and Improve the Quality of Foreign Trade in Shanghai" and "Several Measures to Increase Attracting and Utilizing Foreign Capital in Shanghai". Zhu Min, Chairman of Shanghai Municipal Commerce Commission, Rong Zhiqin, Vice Chairman of Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization, Wei Lu, Chief Economist of Shanghai Municipal Development and Reform Commission, Liu Bo, Deputy Commissioner of Shanghai Customs, and Yang Chao, Deputy Head of Pudong New Area attended the press conference and answered questions from reporters.
Shanghai resolutely implements the deployment of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, and always takes high-quality foreign trade and foreign investment as the top priority. In recent years, it has successively issued several rounds of policies to stabilize foreign trade and foreign investment, which have achieved positive results, further enhanced the function of trade hub, and consolidated its position as the preferred place for foreign investment. In 2022, the city's import and export of goods and the actual use of foreign capital both reached record highs. The city's foreign trade import and export was RMB4.19 trillion, an increase of 3.2%, exceeding 4 trillion yuan for two consecutive years; The actual use of foreign capital was US$23.956 billion, which was stable at over US$20 billion for three consecutive years. Since the beginning of this year, Shanghai's foreign trade and foreign investment have achieved steady growth, showing strong development resilience. From January to February, the import and export of goods in the city was RMB681.56 billion, an increase of 0.7% on the basis of high base and high growth rate in the same period last year. The actual use of foreign capital was US$4.961 billion, an increase of 18%. There are 11 regional headquarters of multinational corporations and 5 foreign-funded R&D centers, with a total of 902 and 536 respectively.
In order to further consolidate the momentum of stabilizing foreign trade and foreign investment, actively respond to various challenges under complex external situations, and continue to promote the high-quality development of foreign trade and foreign investment, Shanghai has formulated and formed "Several Policies and Measures for Promoting Stable Scale and Improving Quality of Foreign Trade in Shanghai" and "Several Measures for Increasing Attraction and Utilization of Foreign Investment in Shanghai".
The formulation of the two policies and measures focuses on the full implementation of various policies and measures to stabilize foreign trade and foreign investment introduced by the state since last year, and further optimizes policy supply and strengthens system integration in combination with Shanghai's reality, which is mainly reflected in three aspects and can be summarized as "three insistences". First, insist on opening to the outside world at a high level to promote the development of foreign trade and foreign investment Second, insist on achieving high-quality development and promoting foreign trade and foreign investment. And third, insist on optimizing the business environment and strengthening the service guarantee of foreign trade and foreign investment.
