At the two-day International Consultative Conference on Future Development, which wound up November 4, some of the world's top business leaders analyzed the weak points of Guangdong enterprises and shared their own success stories at a forum in Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong Province, designed to help raise the international competitiveness of local enterprises.

Byron Grote, managing director and chief financial officer of BP Group, which is one of the world's largest petroleum and petrochemical corporations, suggested that local enterprises pay more attention to research and development and recruiting highly trained personnel.

Price wars are not an effective way to compete and will never bring long-term profits, but they are frequently resorted to by local enterprises, he said.

The concepts of value chain and supply chain should be adopted, according to Grote, who said, "providing more value to the end customer is the right way to go."

Picking up where Grote left off, local entrepreneur Wang Shi, president of Vanke, a local real estate company, said that focus should not be on scale, but rather on competitiveness.

Local enterprises always go for the concept "bigger is better," Wang said, but added that size has nothing to do with increasing an enterprise's core competitiveness.

DuPont, the United States-based scientific products producer, also had some advice for local enterprises. Richard R. Goodman son, executive vice-president and chief operating officer of DuPont, said that joint ventures with the right partner are a good way for local enterprises to tie in with international markets more effectively.

"More attention should be paid to social and environmental issues when dealing with customers, investors and employees," said Francois Roussely, president & CEO of French Government-owned EDF (Electricite de France).

EDF is the only state-owned enterprise attending the forum.

BP plans to invest a further US$3 billion in China in the next five to six years, including US$1 billion in Guangdong, Grote told China Daily.

(China Daily November 5, 2003)