During the first half of this year, actually utilized foreign capital in Southwest China's Chongqing municipality reached $4.01 billion, with 109 foreign-invested enterprises launched in the city, a year-on-year increase of 22.47 percent.
To stabilize foreign capital investment amid the novel coronavirus epidemic, Chongqing issued several policies to support foreign investment. These measures aim to strengthen the protection of foreign-invested enterprises' legitimate rights and interests and increase the confidence of foreign-invested enterprises to develop in Chongqing.
Chongqing also established a work team for foreign investment administration services that provides policy publicity, promotes project implementation, solves problems and communicates important information.
The municipality's work team has solved over 400 issues for foreign investors and issued 149 invitation letters for 59 companies to help foreign-invested enterprises resume work.
Meanwhile, Chongqing has continued to attract investments and communicate with transnational corporations online during the epidemic.
Since the beginning of 2020, Chongqing has held multiple work resumption and investment attraction policy presentations, as well as online investment promotion events with companies from Europe, the United States and Japan.
Through these efforts, the number of foreign-invested projects attracted to Chongqing during the first half of this year increased by 25.8 percent year-on-year, while contractual foreign investment increased by 41.5 percent year-on-year.
John Edwards, the UK trade commissioner for China, praised Chongqing over its rise as a burgeoning center in intelligent manufacturing.