A total of 11 important industrial parks are being developed into a demonstration zone for the construction of the Hainan Free Trade Port. Since the parks opened a year ago, a number of core guidelines have been implemented and market units have been assembled.
The major industrial parks have become the main focus of economic development for the Hainan FTP, said Feng Yan, an official with the Hainan Provincial Development and Reform Commission, at a press conference Thursday in Haikou, capital of southern China’s Hainan Province.
In 2020, the top 11 parks generated total revenue of 506.78 billion yuan (about 79.36 billion US dollars), up 49.8 percent from the previous year, and total tax revenue of 39.54 billion yuan, up of 13.3 percent compared to the previous year.
The most important industrial parks, which take up less than 2 percent of the provincial land area, contributed 15.3 percent to the province’s GDP, 51.9 percent of the volume of imports and exports, and 52.7 percent of the foreign capital actually employed, thus playing an important role Role in the provincial economic growth, said Feng.
China published a master plan in June last year to develop the island into a globally influential and high-ranking free trade port by the middle of the century.
A number of important policies, including zero tariffs and facilitating access to markets and foreign investment, have also been implemented.
“The basic trade and investment policy system of the Hainan FTP has been faked,” said Gao Feng, a spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce, at a news conference on Jan.
“Existing opening measures to encourage investment are being implemented well. The regional headquarters of multinational corporations are also being routed to the Hainan FTP,” said Gao.
Chi Fulin, director of the Hainan-based China Institute for Reform and Development, said building the Hainan FTP is the fundamental path to advance Hainan’s economic reform and opening up.
With the entry into force of the preferential policy, Hainan’s development has gained momentum. In the first four months of this year, 592 companies with foreign participation were founded in the province and achieved growth of 443.12 percent compared to the previous year. Actual foreign capital employed reached $ 674 million, 432.72 percent more than last year.
Shen Danyang, lieutenant governor of Hainan, said the province had implemented various guidelines through these projects that laid a solid foundation for promoting the construction of the Hainan FTP with high quality and high standards.
On July 1, 2020, Hainan increased its annual tax-free purchase allowance from 30,000 yuan to 100,000 yuan per person. After the policy was updated, the average daily duty-free sales reached 120 million yuan by the end of 2020, more than a two-fold increase over the previous year.
To take full advantage of the policy, Hainan rolled out more duty-free businesses, a move that gave a huge boost to the booming duty-free shopping sector. There are currently nine duty-free shops and five duty-free companies.
Duty-free sales hit 993 million yuan during the May holidays that year, up 248 percent, according to Haikou Customs. There were over 121,000 shoppers who together bought more than 1.34 million items, 229 percent more than the previous year.
The rise in duty-free sales has directly spurred Hainan’s tourism development. “We clearly felt the dividends from the free trade port building, especially with the new duty-free sales policy,” said Qian Jiannong, chairman and CEO of Fosun Tourism Group. He found that Atlantis and Club Med in Sanya have benefited significantly from this.
Atlantis Sanya drew around 4.6 million visitors and had sales of more than 1.2 billion yuan in 2020 – a record since it opened in 2018.
Qian added that Fosun plans to increase investments in Hainan and build an area in Sanya called Foliday Town. His investment will be even greater than that of Atlantis.
The first China International Consumer Products Expo took place in Haikou in May as a new platform for China’s opening. It was the first show in China to focus on high quality consumer products at the national level, and it was also the largest consumer boutique exhibition in Asia Pacific.
Representatives from a total of 70 countries and regions took part in the four-day fair and 2,628 brands among 1,505 companies from home and abroad took part in the exhibitions, demonstrating the strong appeal of the Chinese market and the attractiveness of the FTP construction.
On the final day of the fair, the US luxury fashion company Tapestry was among the first 42 companies to register for the second fair.
“China is in the process of introducing a law on Hainan Free Trade Port, and Hainan has a duty-free shopping policy, so we’ve seen the huge potential of the Chinese market,” said Zhou Guanghua, Vice President of Tapestry China.
Hainan’s FTP law is about to be announced and the Hainan’s daily duty-free policy will soon be implemented.
The Hainan FTP will play an important role in China’s reform and opening up and will become a meeting point for international and domestic circulation, Chi said.