On Tuesday, the German-based Metro Group, the world's third largest retail chain, signed a contract with the Tianjin municipal government to invest US$15 million to set up chain stores in the municipality's Hongqiao District.

In the meantime, the international retail giant said it will purchase more goods from Tianjin and other key cities in the country for its retail chain stores not only in China but also around the world.

"It is our first chain store in North China, and we are going to open five stores each year in the big cities of this region," said an executive of the Metro (China) Group.

The chain store is expected to be opened before the next Spring Festival, according to Wang Huairen, magistrate of Hongqiao District.

Other multinational retailers, including the US-based Wal-Mart and France-based Carrefour, are also boosting their presence in China, eying the huge market potential. Xu Jun, senior public relations manager with the Wal-Mart China Co Ltd, said his company planned to set up more purchasing branches in some important Chinese cities after it had moved its global purchasing centre from Hong Kong to Shenzhen in South China's Guangdong Province last year.

Wal-Mart and Carrefour disclosed their plans during the four-day 2002 Tianjin International Chain Store (Global Sourcing) Fair on Tuesday. The fair is jointly sponsored by the Tianjin municipal government and the Tianjin Port Free Trade Zone.

As the first global sourcing fair in China designed for international retail chains, the fair has solicited 36 multinational retailing enterprises and more than 260 commodities suppliers from 22 provinces and autonomous regions around the nation.

Data from the National Bureau of Statistics revealed that the purchasing volume of the foreign retailers in China totalled 249 billion yuan (US$30 billion) last year, accounting for 12 per cent of the national volume of commodity exports.

(China Daily April 11, 2002)