Shanghai builds CIIE into constant trading platform
By Tian Hong from People’s Daily
Shanghai is currently digging
more potential of the China International Import Expo (CIIE), turning the 6-day
event into an all-year-round trading platform.
The first CIIE attracted 3,617 foreign exhibitors to Shanghai within
only 6 days last November, and generated total trading value of $57.8 billion. To
sustain the performance, Shanghai opened an import commodity exhibition and
trading center a month after the conclusion of the event, bearing a hope to
turn exhibits into commodities.
So far, over 20 commodities that were popular
at the first CIIE
have been introduced to the Hongqiao Import Commodity Exhibition and Trading
Center, including Spanish cured ham, Australian
wines and Japanese rice.
The center provides a package of services
including bonded exhibition, transaction, logistics and storage, and customs
clearance.
Bonded trading has two major advantages
when compared with the traditional mode in which duties are usually paid before
transaction. On one hand, it enables merchants to pay their duties after the
sales, which grants the merchants more flexibility of cash flow by lowering capital
occupation; on the other hand, the commodities, if failing to find the proper
markets, can be returned to the bonded warehouses and shipped to other
destinations without paying duties.
A rice brand from Japan’s
Hokkaido witnessed huge popularity at the first CIIE. Its products later
completed debut in the Chinese market under the bonded exhibition trading
service by Shanghai Pushihui Import and Export Co. Ltd.
Under the innovative mode, the
rice is directly transported to a bonded warehouse beside the Hongqiao Import
Commodity Exhibition and Trading Center, and duties will be collected at the
end of each month after the products are sold. Thus, the price of the rice is
10 percent lower thanks to the cut of cost.
The import commodity exhibition
and trading center, as a pilot platform of bonded trading, was established
under the cross-department efforts of Shanghai Customs, Shanghai Municipal
Commission of Commerce and the Administration
Committee of Shanghai Hongqiao Central Business District.
The platform reviews the information
of applying merchants and adopts dynamic supervision, and takes control of the
commodity quality through access threshold and withdrawal mechanism.
Furthermore, the platform offers
preferential prices of rent, “zero charge” of bonded warehouse and information
services, as well as duty-assessment on actual prices, in a bid to save logistics
and capital cost for enterprises.
More than 400 brands and 8,000
commodities from over 50 countries have entered the first phase of the Hongqiao
Import Commodity Exhibition and Trading Center, according to an official from
the Administration Committee of Shanghai Hongqiao Central Business District.
Now the planning of the
second-phase project has been completed, and a bonded logistics center for
multi-users will be put into use at the second CIIE, the official introduced.
To make full use of the spillover
effect of the CIIE, Shanghai is speeding up in building a new mechanism for an
open economy at a higher level.
A slew of innovative mechanisms
have been rolled out, such as the acceptance of inspection results for imported
commodities, the pilot program of overseas pre-inspection for products to be
debuted in Shanghai, and the pre-classification mechanism for newly released
products.
By doing so, Shanghai aims to
build itself into a globally renowned shopping center, a major destination of
first launches, a prioritized destination for high-end brands, and a hub for
original brands.
In addition, the city has set up
relevant standards to attract brands to stage “world debuts” of products and to
open world’s first flagship franchises in Shanghai. It enhanced efforts on the
protection of trademarks of “first-launch” products, and included qualified
brands debuting their products in Shanghai in a key protection list.
Owing to the policies and
regulations in the past, time and places of foreign brands’ marketing campaigns
and promotions were always limited, which resulted in a weak motivation for
internationally renowned brands to debut their products in Shanghai.
To change the situation, Shanghai
Landscaping and City Appearance Administrative Bureau opened a “green channel”
to build the city into a destination for more “world debut” activities.
Statistics indicated that in
2017, a total of 1,265 domestic and foreign brands chose Shanghai as the place
to make the initial launch of their products. The figure doubled between Jan. and
Oct. 2018, with 2,890 renowned brands organizing “world debut” activities in
the city.
The
photo shows the exterior of Hongqiao Import Commodity Exhibition and
Trading Center. (Photo provided by the Administration Committee of Shanghai Hongqiao Central Business District)
Shanghai builds CIIE into constant trading platform
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