Zhejiang provincial government and China’s Ministry of Commerce have jointly announced a set of new measures to support the development of the oil and gas industry chain in the Zhejiang Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ).
China’s State Council recently approved 26 specific measures in 11 areas to support the opening-up of the oil and gas sector in Zhejiang, said Tang Wenhong, director of the Free Trade Zone Port Department of the Ministry of Commerce.
The measures include the introduction of international strategic investors in the oil trade and new financial and taxation policies to transform and upgrade the petrochemical and refining industry. The opening-up will focus on major links in the oil and gas industry chain such as trade, storage, transportation, processing and circulation.
The Zhejiang Pilot FTZ was established in April 2017 and has so far attracted 6,000 oil and gas companies to register in the area. The trade of oil products in the area amounted to 320 billion yuan (US$45.22 billion) last year.
More efforts will be made to promote the development of the liquefied natural gas and clean energy industry, improving the supply of low-sulfur fuel oil and strengthening the marine environment to achieve healthy and sustainable development.
Investment banks
In the first quarter of this year, Chinese investment banks received a combined revenue of 2.86 billion yuan in their equity underwriting businesses, up 65% from 1.73 billion yuan in the same period last year. The increase was mainly due to substantial income growth in their initial public offering (IPO) businesses.
Nine securities recorded more than 100 million yuan of equity underwriting revenue each. CICC and CITIC Construction Investment Securities generated revenue of more than 400 million yuan each, while CITIC Securities, Everbright Securities, Guangfa Securities and Guojin Securities made more than 200 million yuan each.
In fact, the IPO market was affected by the epidemic in the first quarter. However, since the China Securities Regulatory Commission began to use cloud technology to review and approve IPO applications on March 6, the review procedures have been going smoothly.
In the first quarter, the Issuance Examination Committee under CSRC examined 55 IPO applications and approved 50 of them, or 91% of all candidates. All 27 IPO applications filed by Chinese securities firms were approved. They included five applications filed by Everbright Securities, four by Minsheng Securities and three by Guoxin Securities.
Market liquidity
The People’s Bank of China (PBoC), China’s central bank, skipped reverse repos on Thursday, citing reasonably sufficient liquidity in the money market.
On Monday, the PBoC injected 50 billion yuan into the market through the seven-day reverse repos and cut the interest rate by 20 basis points to 2.2% to lower lending costs and offset the economic shock of the novel coronavirus outbreak.
Company news
Huawei Investment & Holding Co Ltd, a subsidiary of the Shenzhen-based Huawei Technologies, set up a fully-owned unit named Honor Device Co Ltd with a registered capital of 300 million yuan on Wednesday, according to the Tianyancha.com.
The newly-established unit will develop, produce and sell telecommunication and electronic products, computers, satellite television receivers, high-frequency parts, digital satellite television receivers and medical devices.
Honor is a major smartphone brand owned by Huawei. Since the Covid-19 outbreak early this year, many Chinese companies have set up units to produce and sell masks and medical devices to help society fight the coronavirus.
Shopping coupons
Dalian Wanda Commercial Management Group Co Ltd, a unit of Wanda Group, will deliver 3.84 million shopping coupons worth nearly 200 million yuan to consumers. The coupon has a face value of 50 yuan and can be used in the company’s 320 shopping malls in China between April 1 and 30. Each shopping mall will deliver 400 coupons per day this month.
The story was written by Xu Jiangshan and Yuan Tianyi and first published at ATimesCN.com.