Zhejiang Woos Foreign Investment in Agricultural Development ZonesZhejiang Province in east China has established seven agricultural development zones which are encouraging foreign investment, a senior provincial official said June 9 at the ongoing 2000 Zhejiang Investment and Trade Fair.Wang Liangqian, director in charge of the provincial rural work office, said that foreign investors are encouraged to sponsor solely-funded enterprises, Sino-foreign joint ventures and cooperative projects in the development zones and they will enjoy preferential treatment. Zhejiang has so far approved 190 foreign-funded agricultural projects, involving a combined contractual foreign investment of 180 million US dollars. Xinhua also learned today from the investment and trade fair that the Ningbo Baoxin Stainless Steel Co. Ltd, which was jointly funded by two Chinese steel companies and three Japanese companies, will get 1.3 billion yuan in investment for its second phase. The money will be used to build the Sino-Japanese joint venture into a stainless steel production base with an annual output of 500,000 tons. The first phase involved a total investment of 1.747 billion yuan, with investment from the Chinese side accounting for 66 percent, and the Japanese side, 34 percent. The company has exported 1,000 tons of products to the United States, Japan and Singapore. So far, China's stainless steel production capacity is only 100, 000 tons, while annual consumption stood at 600,000 tons. The gap between supply and demand will further widen to one million tons by 2006. |
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