Vice-Mayor Jiang Yiren said on Friday that the city will fully explore its service functions so as to provide "a long-term business platform for international sourcing agents and domestic enterprises."

"To realize our goal of becoming an international procurement centre by 2010, we have to step up our efforts," Jiang said.

Jiang made the remarks at the 2002 International Sourcing Conference being held in Shanghai by the municipal government.

The three-day conference, which ends today, is the largest of its kind in Shanghai and has attracted more than 50 transnational giants including General Electric, General Motors, Carrefour, Metro and Wal-Mart, according to the Shanghai Municipal Foreign Economic Relations and Trade Commission, the conference's main sponsor.

Sources with the commission said purchasing agents at the conference, from 17 countries and regions, brought multi-billion-US-dollar purchase orders covering 33 categories, from daily necessities to large machinery.

One-third of the sourcing agents at the conference are from Fortune Global 500 companies, according to the commission.

Commission statistics show that more than 4,000 domestic manufacturers from across the Chinese mainland, as well as from the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions and Taiwan Province, are attending the conference to promote their products.

Wang Qingjiang, division chief of the commission's Trade Development Department, said the city is preparing to host such international procurement conferences regularly, - "possibly annually," he said - to help establish stable business relations between domestic enterprises and transnational purchasing groups.

Hosting such international sourcing conferences is key if the city is to realize its aim of becoming an international procurement centre, said Wang.

(China Daily September 28, 2002)