Fuzhou unveils raft of business-friendly policies

Tourists row boats on a lake in Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province, Jan 28, 2017. [Photo/VCG]

Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province, has issued 10 investment-friendly policies including measures to stimulate the service and high-end industries to promote economic innovation, in a bid to improve its capacity to compete with rivals in other coastal provinces.

These 10 policies offer 49 measures, covering the aspects of overall economic development, high-end recruitment and technology, modern vocational education development, and the development of the internet of things and big data industries.

"The move is crucial to the government to serve the enterprises and promoting development. We can see that the government is determined to accelerate the process of building a new Fuzhou and setting a good example for other coastal cities," said Ni Yuefeng, Fujian's deputy Party chief.

Huang Xuexun, deputy director of Fuzhou's commerce bureau, said these policies can help Fuzhou create a good environment for innovation-driven development and take the lead in attracting domestic and overseas investment.

Under the new policies, companies with headquarters registered in Fuzhou in 2015 or later can be regarded as newly introduced headquarters.

Those companies can be rewarded up to 20 million yuan ($2.9 million) to facilitate their business development.

Besides company headquarters, sales centers and operating centers, as well as research and development centers that have reached certain standards can be regarded as headquarters, and rewarded up to 10 million yuan.

Among the measures to promote technological research and development, apart from a bonus for setting up technology and industrial design centers, companies that have developed the first set of equipment can get an extra bonus up to 2 million yuan.

The policies are also beneficial to absorbing foreign investments. According to Huang, Fuzhou's commerce bureau has a goal of attracting $1.94 billion foreign investments this year.

"The new policies are closely related to our automobile industry. Our company is going to take this opportunity to attract high-end employees, and to increase research productivity, as well as technological innovate ability, in order to better build the automobile brands of Fujian," Huang Chun, chief executive officer of Fujian Motor Industry Group Co, commented.

Zheng Yiran contributed to this story.