BEIJING, April 30 (Xinhua) -- Pudong, a district in east China's Shanghai, saw regional headquarters projects with intention of 18 multinational companies inked on Wednesday at a conference of boosting high-quality development of the headquarters economy in the area.
Last year, thanks to the system innovation in the pilot free trade zone, VOLVO Construction Equipment (China) Co., Ltd. concluded the first deal of domestic offshore trade settlement, promoting the first trial of offshore trade in Pudong. In January of this year, VOLVO Construction Equipment's Asian headquarters moved from Singapore to Shanghai.
"The main reason for this change is that Asia accounts for more than 50 percent of VOLVO Construction Equipment's market share, and China is the most important market in Asia," said Guo Tengze, VOLVO Construction Equipment's global senior vice president.
He added that the Asian headquarters established in Pudong not only serves the Chinese and Asian markets, but will also become one of the company's three global headquarters.
China's huge domestic demand market is an important factor in attracting regional headquarters of multinational companies.
Karl Storz, a leading endoscope manufacturer in the world, said that since it entered the Pudong New Area, from 2009 to 2019, its sales revenue increased by more than 12 times. In order to meet the growing demand of the Chinese market, its German headquarters decided to invest nearly 265 million yuan (about 37.59 million U.S. dollars) to build the China headquarters which is the company's largest overseas investment project.
Pudong also unveiled a slew of measures at the conference to create a good environment for the development of the regional headquarters of multinational companies.
It will support the multinational companies to establish their Asia-Pacific headquarters and global headquarters here, provide green channels for their talents, and encourage the regional headquarters to expand new models such as digital trade and cross-border e-commerce.
Statistics show that up to now, the total number of regional headquarters of multinational companies in Pudong has reached 340, accounting for nearly half of these companies in Shanghai. In the first quarter of this year, Pudong saw the foreign capital in actual use stand at 2.155 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 36.6 percent year-on-year. (Edited by Hu Pingchao with Xinhua Silk Road, hupingchao@xinhua.org)
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