Private Firms in Shanghai Play Bigger Role in Foreign Trade

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, November 17, 2002

Private Firms in Shanghai Play Bigger Role in Foreign Trade

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Shanghai's privately-owned companies exported 200 million US dollars worth of goods from January to October, a huge increase of 5.2 times over the same time last year, according to the General Administration of Customs.

Though the figure is far behind that of foreign-funded and state-owned enterprises in Shanghai, whose exports in the same period topped 15.57 billion and 10.4 billion US dollars respectively, private firms have made rapid progress over the pastfifteen months.

At the end of July last year, only 68 privately-owned companiesin Shanghai were entitled to transact foreign trade, a number which surged to 1,602 by the end of October this year, an average increase of 100 a month.

A customs officer attributed the fast-growing share of private firms in the foreign trade sector to new policies adopted by the Shanghai municipal government offering fair and open market competition for businesses with all types of ownership.

Under a policy introduced last August, all Chinese companies set up in Pudong a year before with a registered capital of more than 3 million yuan (361,445 US dollars) are eligible to conduct import and export transactions.

An amendment announced this March reduced the amount of required capital to 1 million yuan (120,480 US dollars) for commercial and trading companies and to 500,000 yuan (60,240 US dollars) for manufacturing businesses.

At the time China first permitted private firms to do foreign trade in 1999, only five companies in Shanghai were involved.

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