Hunan’s Opening Up Makes Breakthroughs

　　The South and West Hunan Industrial Transfer Demonstration Area was approved on November 10, marking a new open platform for Hunan’s economic and social development.

　　Hunan is implementing the innovation-oriented opening up and development strategy. Breakthroughs have been made in open platform construction, through coordinating with the state free trade pilot zones; strengthening supporting role of ports, comprehensive bonded areas, and industrial parks, and; developing international logistics.

　　According to the Hunan Department of Commerce, Hunan learnt the free trade zones’ experiences, and promoted 56 reform pilot projects in three batches, and 12 typical cases in two batches. Present emphasis is the 27 reform pilot projects of the fourth batch.

　　A series of reform measures has been carried out, including “single-window” system construction, and customs clearance facilitation. Port operation improved markedly. In the first ten months this year, Hunan’s special customs surveillance zones realized foreign trade value of 6.12 billion USD, increasing by 76.1%; Yueyang Chenglingji Port’s container throughput reached 408,000 TEUs, an increase of 13l.9%; and, Changsha airport handled 28,000 tons of imported and exported goods worth 2.32 billion USD, which grew by 61.8% and 39.2%.

　　Hunan has 16 national economic development zones and hi-tech zones; 123 provincial industrial parks; 10 competitive industrial clusters; nine 100-billion industries; and, four 100-billion industrial parks. A "three-dimensional" multifunctional port system has been built, with the most ports in central and western provinces, including one E-port, two air ports, three shipping ports, four highway ports, five railway ports, seven customs surveillance zones, and twelve designated ports.

　　Changsha was approved as a National Comprehensive Cross-border E-commerce Pilot Zone this year, and designated as one of the first 13 national cultural export zones. The China-Africa Economic and Trade Fair was held in Hunan and made a historic breakthrough in terms of the economic and trade platforms. An automobile parallel import pilot program, imported fruit designated ports, and imported medicine designated ports were approved. The Hunan Gaoqiao Grand Market was approved as a National market procurement trade mode pilot. Three new state-level foreign trade transformation and upgrading bases were approved, ranking second in central China.