The Hunan Economic Cooperation Fair (Hunan Business Conference) opened in Hengyang city, Hunan province on Sept 28. Over 100 projects were signed during the fair, with an investment of 68.23 billion yuan ($10.8 billion).
The session, aimed to promote economic cooperation and social development in the province, attracted more than 1,300 participants from 54 delegations across China, 42 of Hunan's chambers of Commerce, Fortune 500 companies, China's top 500 companies and other well-known domestic and foreign financial institutions.
Hunan Development Contribution Award winners were announced at the opening ceremony and 110 provincial project contracts of 68.23 billion yuan investment were signed, of which Hengyang signed 41 contracts worth 36.876 billion yuan in total, accounting for 37.3 percent and 54 percent of the total number from the province respectively.
Among the 41 projects, 28 projects have an investment exceeding 500 million yuan, accounting for 68.3 percent, and 15 (36.6 percent of) projects with an investment no less than one billion yuan.
Over 30 chambers of commerce won the Hunan Development Contribution Award, including Hunan Chamber of Commerce in Guangdong, Zhejiang Chamber of Commerce in Hunan, Shenzhen Chamber of Commerce in Hunan..
Currently, Hunan has business connections with 194 countries and regions and cooperates with 34 central government ministries. There are 71 state-owned enterprises and 63 Fortune 500 companies, including Foxconn, Fiat, Mitsubishi, Omron, that have made their way to the central China province.
Over the past five years, the annual growth of the province's total import and export volume reached 19.5 percent, and last year's volume approached $14.7 billion, 2.4 times of that of 2005.
Data shows that 142 Hunan chambers of Commerce have been established domestically and abroad, with more than 30,000 corporate members and a total asset of over one trillion yuan.
The first Hunan Business Conference was held in 2007, since then, Hunan-born businessmen have brought more than 100 billion yuan to China.
