On the afternoon of September 6 local time, 32 cooperation projects have been signed between Guangdong and European enterprises, with a total investment of about 34.9 billion RMB, according to a conference held in Munich, Germany, to boost the economic and trade cooperation between GBA and Europe.
The conference, jointed held by governments of Guangdong province, HK and Macao SARs, attracted more than 500 attendants including German and European politicians and representatives from Fortune 500 companies such as BASF, Siemens as well as well-known Chinese enterprises including GAC Group, Mingyang Smart Energy and Sunwoda Electronic Co., Ltd. and State Power Investment Corporation Limited.
Wang Weizhong, governor of Guangdong Province, made a speech at the conference, specifying the investment opportunities and the business environment of Guangdong and GBA, inviting European entrepreneurs to invest in Guangdong and GBA.
Representatives from nine cities of the Pearl River Delta, including Guangzhou and Shenzhen, introduced their own investment policies at a theme forum, detailing the investment opportunities in key cooperation platforms such as Guangdong-Macao In-depth Cooperation Zone in Hengqin, Nansha Demonstration Zone for Comprehensive Cooperation between Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao and Sino-Singapore Guangzhou Knowledge City.
So far, over 350 of the Fortune 500 companies have invested in Guangdong. A larger number of European companies, including Siemens, Volkswagen, Sanofi and Nestlé, have seized opportunities to invest in Guangdong.
With a total investment of 10 billion euros, BASF’s Verbund site chemical production project in Zhanjiang, as the first wholly foreign-owned project in the field of heavy chemicals in China, took less than two years from signing the memorandum of understanding to the construction of the first set of equipment, becoming a benchmark project for China-EU cooperation. Meanwhile, an array of Guangdong-based enterprises such as Huawei and BYD have also increased investment in Europe.
Guangdong has close economic and trade cooperation with Europe. Statistics show that in 2022, Guangdong’s total import and export to Europe reached 182.34 billion euros, an increase of 12.3% year-on-year. In the first half of 2023, Guangdong actually attracted 830 million euros of European foreign investment, an increase of 1.2 times year-on-year.
Reporter | Nancy Ye
Editors | Olivia, Nan, Will, Jerry
Photos provided to GDToday
