New International Industrial City Rising on the Red Sea Coast

Source: Tianjin Daily

Author, Yue Fuyu

In the golden autumn of September, at the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, the China-Egypt TEDA Suez Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone (hereinafter referred to as the TEDA Cooperation Zone) once again became the hot spot of China-Egypt cooperation and the focus of Chinese and foreign media.

On the afternoon of September 6, the signing ceremony of major Sino-Egyptian production capacity cooperation projects was held in Beijing. The TEDA Cooperation Zone welcomed six signed projects, including Shandong Tianyi Chemical Bromine Chemical Project, China Glass Project, Jiangsu Wuxi Boda Solar Cell Project, Shandong Binhua Chlor-alkali Chemical Project, Dongfang Dahui Modified Starch Project and KAKS Home Appliance Supply Chain. The total agreed investment of these cooperation projects exceeds 1 billion US dollars, and more than 3000 local jobs will be created when they are put into operation.

Since the beginning of this year, the TEDA cooperation zone has continued to benefit, attracting investment has repeatedly reported good news, and many major projects have been signed and settled. Just last month, Hisense's Egyptian TV factory project officially settled in. After the first phase is completed, it will produce 1.5 million high-end screens annually. After the project is completed, it will generate about US $0.1 billion in foreign exchange income for Egypt every year.

Shouldering the mission of "the bridgehead of China-Egypt economic and trade cooperation", the TEDA Cooperation Zone has become a demonstration zone for China-Egypt economic and trade cooperation--

In terms of business environment, TEDA cooperation zone replicates the software and hardware supporting mode of Tianjin Economic and Technological Development Zone. It not only completes the infrastructure construction of "seven links and one leveling", but also builds supporting facilities such as office buildings, standard factory buildings, overseas warehouses, warehouses, hotels, blue and white collar apartments, etc., and builds a full cycle service system for enterprise investment to help enterprises put into operation quickly.

In terms of industrial agglomeration, the TEDA Cooperation Zone has formed four leading industrial clusters: new building materials, petroleum equipment, high and low voltage equipment, and machinery manufacturing, and has successfully attracted a large number of world-class Chinese-funded enterprises to settle in, such as Jushi, Fengshang, Xidian, Universiade, Midea, Caidie, etc. These enterprises to TEDA cooperation zone as an investment platform, combined with their own core research and development technology, the successful layout of overseas markets, to make up for the local industrial gap, to achieve China's industrial technology output, market radius radiation in the Middle East, Europe and the United States, to promote the formation of a double cycle pattern.

In terms of people-to-people exchanges, the localized management of talents in TEDA Cooperation Zone has become a model for overseas parks. The localization rate of enterprises in the park has reached more than 90%, and a group of professional technical workers and business managers have been trained and exported to Egypt. In addition, with the help of the National International Development Cooperation Agency's plan to assist in the construction of technical schools in the Egyptian Special Economic Zone, the technical training center has been successfully promoted to settle in the TEDA cooperation zone to train technical talents for the local area.

Up to now, the TEDA Cooperation Zone has attracted more than 170 companies, including 8 Fortune 500 investment companies, 12 China Fortune 500 investment companies, and 14 listed company investment companies. In addition to a number of leading Chinese enterprises, international enterprises in Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Canada and other regions are also booming here.

The TEDA Cooperation Zone has attracted investment of about US $3 billion, accumulated sales of nearly US $4.9 billion, and paid taxes of about US $0.3 billion, directly solving nearly 10,000 local jobs.

The "TEDA Overseas Model" summarized and formed by the TEDA Cooperation Zone has been applied to more than 10 overseas park projects along the "the belt and road initiative" route through consulting services, such as the China Road and Bridge Mombasa Free Trade Zone Project in Kenya, the China Merchants Djibouti Project, and the China Communications Construction of Morocco's Mohammed VI Science and Technology City Project to help the development of China's overseas parks. This year, relying on 16 years of rich experience in the development and operation of the TEDA Cooperation Zone, China-Africa TEDA was successfully elected as a member of the Industry Standardization Technical Committee of the first overseas economic and trade cooperation zone, and became a veritable standard setter for the overseas economic and trade cooperation zone.

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