A comprehensive legal system and innovative tax and customs regimes are crucial for a successful free trade zone, experts and officials told a forum yesterday.
“Shanghai has sent a signal to the world that it will have a fast track and understandable legal regime,” Graham Mather, chairman of the World Free Zone Convention, told the Shanghai Forum at Fudan University.
He suggested that the pilot free trade zone in Shanghai adopt a competitive arbitration rule to be applied to all companies.
Pauline van der Meer Mohr, president of Erasmus University Rotterdam, recommended that Shanghai improve links between the FTZ and other ports, both inside and outside China.
“Developing innovative tax and customs compliance regimes will increase the value of the Shanghai zone for China,” she added.
Pansy Yau, deputy director of research at the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, said the zone must address effective supply chain management because international production, trade and investment are increasingly organized in widely separated global locations.
Jian Danian, deputy director of the FTZ’s administration, said the success of the zone depends on institutional innovation, including the adoption of a more open investment environment and reform of how government functions.
More than 9,000 enterprises have registered in the zone since it opened last September, bringing the total number of zone-based companies to around 15,000.