On April 21, the Ministry of Commerce announced China's foreign investment cooperation in the first quarter of this year. The head of the Cooperation Department of the Ministry of Commerce said that in the first quarter of 2020, Chinese domestic investors made non-financial direct investments in 2,538 foreign companies in 153 countries and regions, with a total investment of 169.03 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 0.6%. Foreign labor service cooperation dispatched 64,000 laborers of various types, a decrease of 47,000 from the same period of the previous year, and 744,000 laborers of various types abroad at the end of March.
According to data released by the Ministry of Commerce, the turnover of foreign contracted projects in the first quarter was 195.34 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 12.4%, and the decrease was 2.9 percentage points higher than the previous two months. The value of newly signed contracts reached 386.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.2%.
"The main reason for the decline in turnover of foreign contracted projects is the slowdown in construction progress, and some projects have to be stopped for delay." Liu Xiangdong, deputy minister of the Economic Research Department of the China International Economic Exchange Center, said in an interview with the Securities Daily that in January this year -In February, China's foreign contracted projects completed a turnover of 108 billion yuan, down 9.5% year-on-year. In March, the challenges of foreign investment cooperation are huge.
Talking about the reasons for the increase in the newly signed contract value, Liu Xiangdong said that recently, domestic and foreign asset prices have fallen, which provides better opportunities for foreign investment to acquire equity assets. In particular, countries along the “Belt and Road” need investment cooperation to Boost economic activity.
According to the person in charge of the Cooperation Department of the Ministry of Commerce, China's investment in the “Belt and Road” maintained growth in the first quarter. In the first quarter, Chinese companies invested US $ 4.2 billion in non-financial direct investment in 52 countries along the “Belt and Road”, an increase of 11.7% year-on-year, accounting for 17.3% of total investment in the same period, an increase of 2.4 percentage points from the previous year.
In addition, China's foreign investment cooperation in the first quarter has the following characteristics: First, the structure of foreign investment continued to diversify. In the first quarter, foreign non-financial direct investment mainly flowed to the fields of leasing and business services, wholesale and retail, manufacturing, and mining, accounting for 39.9%, 15.2%, 13.5%, and 7.2%, of which leasing and business services, The investment in wholesale and retail industry and mining industry increased by 39.7%, 59.6% and 4.2% year-on-year respectively, and the investment in manufacturing industry decreased by 38.5% year-on-year. The second is the increase in newly signed major projects of foreign contracted projects. In the first quarter, there were 187 projects with a newly signed contract value of more than US $ 50 million, an increase of 10 from the same period of the previous year, totaling US $ 45.74 billion, accounting for 82.6% of the total value of newly signed contracts. Among them, there are 114 projects with hundreds of millions of dollars, an increase of 22 from the previous year.
