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SCMP Reporter

BEIJING plans to issue new guidelines for foreign investment, according to a foreign trade official.

  Liu Yimin, chairman of the China Association of Enterprises with Foreign Investment, said that two blueprints for foreign investors - the Provisional Regulations on Directing the Orientation of Foreign Investment, and the List of Industries Targeted for Foreign Investment - which were passed by the State Council last year, would be released in the first half of this year.

  The guidelines were aimed specifically at encouraging foreign manufacturers to invest in remote parts of central and western China, he said.

  Mr Liu said it was one of the central government's policies to encourage more foreign investment in inland resource development projects, giving inland regions the kind of preferential treatment that coastal areas have traditionally enjoyed.

  New technology industries and high value-added export industries would be encouraged in the coastal cities, but labour-intensive projects would not be given approval.

   Mr Liu said overseas-funded joint-stock companies would take the form of foreign-invested enterprises which allowed the enterprise to recruit more investing parties, making it easier to absorb working capital.

   This might solve the capital shortages of those enterprises, particularly when they found difficulty in securing loans from banks, he said.

   The Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Co-operationpreviously issued a temporary regulation on Overseas-funded Companies Limited by Shares, paving the way for a new form of overseas investment in China.

   So far, 80 such enterprises have been granted approval on a trial basis.

   According to statistics, US$33.7 billion of foreign direct investment was absorbed last year.

  By the end of last year, 221,718 foreign-invested projects had been approved, with total foreign investment of $99.5 billion.

   Foreign trade volume of foreign-funded enterprises reached $87.65 billion, or 37 per cent of last year's total. Exports by foreign enterprises came to $34.71 billion, or 28.7 per cent of the total.



Beijing to lure investors inland