NingboLife and NingboExpat since 2004 - Ningbo Newsletter 1st October 2012 (3)

Ningbo Newsletter 1st October 2012 (3)

Details: Category: What's Happening In Ningbo Newsletter; Published: Monday, 01 October 2012 10:05

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Happy Holidays

Ningbo received 393,500 tourists on September 30

As the first day of the Golden week and the first day of the holiday for free passage of private cars, September 30 witnessed many citizens conduct self-driving tours. The traffic pressure around Ningbo was not very heavy and everything was in order in all the major scenic areas in Ningbo.

The number of tourists to such hot scenic areas as Xikou Scenic Spot, Fenghuang Mountain Amusement Park, Dapeng Mount Tourist Resort, Cicheng Ancient town, Dongqian Lake Tourist resort and Ningbo Ocean World saw a slight increase, with tourists mainly coming from the nearby areas in Jiangsu Province, Zhejiang Province and Shanghai in self-driving tours organized by family, friends or self-driving clubs. The number of tourists to the Old Bund and Baoguo Temple in Jiangbei District and Haitian Island almost doubled that of usual days.

11 village Yinzhou Bank Branches established

The Development Research Center of the State Council recently has published a series of special research reports on the development pattern of Yinzhou Bank.

The series report, with the title of "New environment and development strategies of small and medium-sized banks: a case study of Yinzhou bank", made an in-depth analysis of the development concept of "benefit sharing and win-win cooperation" and its contribution to the competitive strength of the bank. Five points are listed as revelations from the development of Yinzhou Bank: seeking after regional expansion on the basis of the local development, improving the standard of professional services with the strategy of careful advancement and comprehensive development, strengthening the construction of corporate culture and creating healthy and positive corporate culture, promoting the innovations on products and mechanism and reducing reliance on interest margins, and accelerating technology upgrading, improving operation efficiency and reducing operation costs.

In recent years, by means of independent launching and strategic investment, Yinzhou Bank established 11 village branches in Guangxi, Xinjiang, Sichuan, Anhui, Hebei and Zhejiang. It is estimated that there will by 24 branches by the end of this year and the bank will strategically invest in six small and medium-sized financial institutions.

New "Ningbo tourism map" released

It is learned from some related departments that the latest version of "Ningbo tourism map", jointly developed by Ningbo Tourism Bureau and Zhejiang Provincial Engineering Investigation Institute, was released a few days ago.

It is said that different from the previous versions, the latest version is directly co-made by the related tourism departments, thus covering more reliable public service information, more comprehensive tourism elements and more standard names of tourist attractions. After a series of adjustments, the new version of tourism map not only includes such important information on major tourist attractions, big holiday hotels, gas stations, and hot traveling lines for self-driving tours, village tours and mountaineering tours, but also provides personalized tourist information according to the different tourist demands of consumers.

Fortune Management Summit 2012 Held in Ningbo

The Fortune Management Summit 2012 was held recently at the Shangri-La Hotel, Ningbo. The Forum was jointly organized by Ningbo Daily Jiangxia Think Tank and Hangzhou Industrial & Commercial Trust. More than 100 entrepreneurs and scholars, including Liang Yaowen from Morgan Stanley and leaders of Hangzhou Industrial & Commercial Trust Co., Ltd. launched a brainstorming about trust and real estate development in China.
Trust, as the name implies, is "managing money matters entrusted by the people". The data released at the forum show that after 20 years of development the trust industry across the country has the total trust assets of 4.8 trillion yuan by the end of last year, which is an increase of 58% over 2010. By the end of June, this figure has soared to 5.54 trillion yuan, among which, the trust funds account for 95% of the total. Currently, the trust funds mainly go to basic industries, enterprises, real estate, financial institutions and securities.
It is worth noting that the once heated real estate investment trust among investors and developers have cooled down significantly. Statistics from the forum show that t the proportion of real estate trust funds account for less than 13% of the total and the absolute amount of trusts funds in real estate sector is coming down year by year.
Liang Yaowen pointed out that for investment in the real estate sector, the selection of cooperative partners should be based on a high-standard risk assessment, which is an extremely important work of the trust company before making an investment.
Many representatives at the forum believed that trust companies are playing increasingly important roles in management of personal wealth. In allocating private assets, attention should be paid on how to reduce risks to the minimum when allocating assets in different fields and in different economic cycles. The role of trust companies is to reallocate the funds entrusted by clients and invest in various fields and products of different cycles, aiming to yield the maximum benefits for customers. A survey shows that there are two million people who own over 10 million yuan of assets and that financial institutions currently have a relatively low number of such quality customers. Therefore, there exists a huge market for asset management.

First batch of overseas public service platforms established

Ningbo made known its first batch of overseas public service platforms, sources from the foreign trade bureau said. To help enterprises to further explore the international market, accelerate the pace of "going global", the city selected its first batch of overseas public service platforms, which are Benin-based Chinese economic and trade development center, Nigeria-based Zhongce industrial Park and Australia-based Chinese famous brands showcasing and distribution center.
Private enterprises are playing major roles in overseas investments and the investment scale keeps increasing. By the end of July, Ningbo enterprises have established 1564 overseas investments and agencies, involving the total investment of 3.64 billion USD, among which, the Chinese investment takes 1.732 billion USD. The investments are scattered in 97 countries and regions. The government decided to give particular policy support to these platforms. Certain subsidies will be granted to those enterprises that exhibit on the platforms.

Retail sales of consumer goods enjoy a modest recover

Due to seasonal change, the sample enterprises' adjustment and other factor, the city's total retail sales of consumer goods of companies above designated size enjoyed a modest recovery last month, as indicated in the report released by the trade bureau of Ningbo on Sept. 24.
The data show that last month the city's total retail sales of companies above the designated size reached 10.76 billion yuan, up 15.6% over the same period last year. The accumulated retail sales of above designated size from January to August totaled 77.9 billion, up12.9%, which was 2.5 percentage points higher than that of the provincial average increase, ranking the fourth in Zhejiang. In addition, the accumulated merchandise sales of companies above designated size during the eight months reached 495.18billion yuan, up 6.4% over the past year. The sales in August alone stood at 66.7 billion.
However, the city's traditional retail still faces a grim situation, said the Trade Bureau. In August , the sales of 21 major department stores surveyed increased by 1.89% over the same period last year, 7 major hypermarket up 4.99% over the previous year while the sales of 12 chain supermarket only increased by 2.05%, and 319 franchised stores decreased by 9.52% over the past year.
Three major adversities are affecting today's traditional retail trade, which are the worsened economic environment, the sluggish consumption and the impact of rising e-commerce. First of all, due to the unfavourable economic environment, the growth rate of the per capita disposable income and expenditures of the city's urban residents for the first half year decreased when compared with the same period last year, which affected consumer's confidence. Among them, the proportion of food consumption rebounded from 37.4% in the first half of 2010 to 38.2% in 2011,and further increased to 38.3% this year. Secondly, because of the "internal and external" pressures people are saving more money instead of spending, which restrains consumption somewhat. And the rise of the overseas purchasing and the increasing outbound tourism and other factors lead to a massive outflow of luxury goods consumption and even daily necessities consumption. However, the greater impact is from online purchasing, which has affected department stores greatly.

National High-Tech Zone Development Strategic Seminar Held in Ningb

The 2012 National High-tech Zone Development Strategic Seminar and National High-tech Zone (Ningbo) Innovation Forum were held in Ningbo on September 24. This was the first time the national seminar was held in Ningbo. Vice Mayor Chen Zhongchao attended and addressed the conference.

After 20 years’ hard work, the high-tech zones in China have developed into an important force of the national economy. As a member of the “national development zones”, Ningbo Hi-tech Zone has introduced 200 R & D institutions and over 30,000 S &T talents and built 500,000 square meters of high-level incubators in accordance with philosophy of “a district of independent innovation, the core area of technology start-ups, a high-tech demo zone and a sci-tech park of harmonious development". It shall be turned into an important carrier of urban innovation and an S&T innovation base in the south of the Yangtze River Delta.

70% of Ningbo Enterprises Taking Initiatives to Overcome Technical Barriers

According to statistics released at the news conference held by the Information Office of municipal government on September 24, to overcome technical trade barriers, 72.55% of Ningbo enterprises have taken the initiative to strengthen management and independent innovation and improve product competitiveness and have achieved great progress in international competition.

With the development of economic globalization and trade liberalization and with restriction of WTO rules, tariff rates are getting much lower and traditional non-tariff barriers have been gradually. However, an increasing number of foreign countries are taking more flexible and subtle technical trade measures as means of trade protection.

A survey from Ningbo Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau shows that the impact on Ningbo export enterprises has been on the rise, increased from 30.74% in 2007 to 55.10% in 2011. The resulting economic losses were high. Ningbo’s export enterprises suffered a direct loss of 2.203 billion US Dollars, accounting for 3.62% of the total exports of the year. The affected fields, ranging from agricultural products, food, textile and garment, was expanded to home appliances, toys, wooden products, rubber and plastic products, chemicals and vehicles.

Technical trade measures are like double-edged swords. While having a negative impact on the export of Ningbo products, they have also encouraged the growth of local enterprises.

“Transformation of idea plays an important part in the development of enterprises”, said by Chen Mengyu, deputy director of Ningbo Inspection and Quarantine Bureau. When the double green directives of ROHS and WEEE were formally promulgated in 2003, Ningbo household appliances enterprises felt it too hard to adapt. However, after several years’ hard work, more and more enterprises have changed from "crying wolf" to accept and meet head-on. Surveys show that 72.55% of Ningbo enterprises have taken the initiative to strengthen management and independent innovation and improved product competitiveness to cope with foreign technical trade measures in 2011, 1.43 times higher than the national average rate of 29.91% in 2006.

Today, more and more Ningbo enterprises choose to improve and upgrade their own product quality to meet the challenge of the technical trade measures. The export unqualified rate of electromechanical products dropped from 4% in 2001 to 0.25% in 2011. Many enterprises have experienced a series of sublimation including brand creation, technological innovation, transformation and upgrading.

After 10 years’ experience in WTO, Ningbo enterprises now are good at safeguarding their legitimate rights and interests. In order to amend the CR bill, the Lighter Industry Association traveled a long way to negotiate with the EU and postponed the vote on the implementation of the CR Act for several times which finally forced the EU to accept the amendments.

Four Post-Doctoral Research Stations Set up in Ningbo

News came from Ningbo University on September 24 that four post-doctoral research Stations had been added in Ningbo. This information was jointly issued by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and the National Postdoctoral Management Committee. The four postdoctoral stations were the polymer chemistry station of CAS Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology& Engineering and the postdoctoral stations of mechanics, information and communication engineering and aquatic science at Ningbo University respectively. It was learned that Ningbo University, having its post-doctoral research stations for the first time, has begun to develop post-doctoral management policy and postdoctoral researchers recruitment plan to attract domestic and foreign talents.