Deputy mayor Jiang Yiren said, "We have updated the plan for contracted overseas investment to take full advantage of the current favorable opportunities for attracting investment."

Shanghai, along with other regions of China, reported robust growth in overseas investment in the first year following the country's entry into the World Trade Organization.

In the first eight months, the city reported contracted overseas investment worth 6.848 billion dollars, up 36.8 percent, year-on-year, topping the annual goal of 6 billion dollars four months ahead of schedule.

Despite these impressive figures, the city, in the midst of industrial restructuring and a host of ambitious infrastructure projects, continues to demand large amounts of overseas investment.

To attract more overseas investment, experts said, Shanghai must open more fields to investors, create new forms of investment and further improve its investment environment.

Preferential policies have been the main strategy employed by Shanghai to attract overseas investment up until now, however, now is the time to focus efforts on creating an excellent investment environment for investors, the experts said.

As growing numbers of overseas investors are choosing to set up solely-owned rather than joint ventures in China, deputy mayor Jiang said Shanghai will explore the possibility of attracting overseas investment through takeovers and mergers, which would permit more multinationals to take over small- and medium-sized state-owned enterprises through the capital market.

While continuing to attract more overseas venture capital to the city's hi-tech sector, Jiang said, the government will also encourage non-state-owned firms to make use of overseas funding.

In addition, the city will take measures to reduce the commercial costs of overseas businesses. For example, by next year, customs clearance time at seaports and airports will be cut to 24 and 12 hours, respectively. The clearance process may be further reduced to eight hours for information technology businesses or for enterprises with special needs, he said.

To further improve services to investors, the city has opened a new information hotline and plans to set up more investors' complaint centers, in addition to the existing twenty-three.

(China Daily October 15, 2002)