2023 marks the tenth anniversary of the construction of the national pilot free trade zone and the fourth anniversary of the operation of the Jiangsu pilot free trade zone. As the region with the highest degree of openness and the strongest economic vitality in China, Jiangsu will continue to promote the construction of open platform carriers, deepen the reform and development of free trade pilot zones, introduce a three-year action plan for the implementation and improvement strategy of Jiangsu’s free trade pilot zones, and an implementation plan for optimizing and improving the business environment in a bid to steadily expand institutional openness, and strive to stay ahead and make demonstration in serving the country in building a new development paradigm.
For many biopharmaceutical startups, market-oriented financing has always been a challenge due to the lack of mortgageable physical assets.
Laitekang (Suzhou) Biopharmaceutical Co., Ltd., which is facing this financing challenge, recently received a 10-million-yuan credit line.
This is a successful application of the "biopharmaceutical pipeline pledge" financial service pioneered by the Suzhou area of the Jiangsu Free Trade Zone in the country by using the "biopharmaceutical research and development pipeline" owned by the enterprise with independent intellectual property rights as the core asset to pledge to the bank, helping it obtain loan credit and alleviate the urgency of the situation.
“The credit of 10 million yuan should be able to alleviate some of the financial pressure on our company and support the early research and development of the company's operations,” said Li Shengwei, Assistant General Manager of Laitekang (Suzhou) Biopharmaceutical Co., Ltd.
The Suzhou area of the Jiangsu Free Trade Zone, which has gathered over 2000 upstream and downstream biopharmaceutical enterprises, is promoting this innovative financial service by relying on the Yangtze River Delta Science and Technology Element Center, a public service platform for technological innovation, to provide technology achievement value evaluation services for enterprises, and to break through the financing barriers of start-up biopharmaceutical research and development enterprises so as to have achieved the transformation of financial qualification collateral from physical assets to intellectual assets.
“We will collaborate with multiple banks and strive to standardize such a product by the end of 2023, which can better introduce financial capital into the biopharmaceutical industry innovation cluster,” said Hua Zhongwei, General Manager of the Yangtze River Delta Technology Element Trading Center.
The Lianyungang area of the Jiangsu Free Trade Zone is focusing on building a two-way open gateway between east and west so as to accelerate the construction of an important international transportation hub for Asia and Europe, and launch the "1+4" joint inspection mechanism, which takes the "Joint Inspection Information System" as the "one platform" and adopts the "four step work method" of "shared access to information, joint unpacking inspection, joint recognition of appraisal results, and joint case investigation".
Law enforcement cooperation replaces the previous practice of separating cargo inspection and port inspection and repeatedly opening containers, achieving a "one-time inspection" by maritime and customs, and assisting in the rapid export of foreign trade products.
“Through this mode, the time spent on inspecting a single container has been reduced from 36 hours to 1 hour, saving approximately 60000 yuan in costs,” Lei Yong, Chief of the Supervision Department of Xugou Maritime Department of Lianyungang Maritime Bureau, said.
As of September, the Jiangsu Free Trade Zone has accumulated 279 institutional innovation achievements, including 15 replicated and promoted nationwide, 8 completed registration in ministries and commissions under the State Council, and 108 replicated and promoted within the province. From January to August, the Jiangsu Pilot Free Trade Zone recorded a foreign direct investment of 1.66 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 8%. In the meantime, the province recorded a total import and export value of 287.1 billion yuan by gathering 7794 foreign trade enterprises, ensuring that its open economy indicators are among the top in the same batch of free trade pilot zones in China.
