International Business Opportunities

By handing the first residency certificate to general director of Severstal-avto Vadim Shvetsov, was inaugurated Elabuga industrial-production special economic zone in Elabuga. It is one of the six special economic zones in Russia that were legislatively created in December 2005.

Four of those, in Dubna, Zelenograd, St. Petersburg and Tomsk, were technical-innovative zones, and two of them, in Lipetsk region and Elabuga, were industrial-production zones. […]

Special economic zones are now being created faster in Russia even than in India and China, the world’s leaders in this area.
Russian Minister of Economic Development and Trade German Gref suggested making the land around Lake Baikal, Teletskoe Lake and the Black Sea shore special economic zones for tourism. (source)

The 2006 Shanxi (Hong Kong) Investment Attraction Fair was held in Hong Kong from July 25 to 27.
The goal was to attract investors from both home and abroad in the area of Yuncheng, the southwestern gate of North China’s Shanxi Province.

Eleven major cities and prefectures of North China’s Shanxi Province showcased their projects for overseas investment at the fair.

Zhang Maocai, secretary of the Yuncheng Committee of the Communist Party of China, told, the city has made strides in areas of agricultural processing, aluminium magnesium alloy production, precision casting, fine chemistry, modern logistics, water saving technology, disposal of garbage and sewage, as well as many advances in the cultural and tourism industries. (source)

The new fuel tax will be introduced soon in China, reflects the Chinese government’s policy of cutting down on energy consumption and pollution.  

Vice-finance minister Liao Xiaojun said, according to Xinhua news agency, government would also create tax breaks for the use of energy-saving equipment, and study lower purchase tax for cars that use less fuel and produce fewer emissions.

China’s economic and social development blueprint for 2006-2010, which was approved by the annual session of China’s parliament in March, has set a target to reduce energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20 percent by the end of 2010. (source)

After a 11-year long process, it seems Vietnam is to join to WTO.

Erik Glenne, chairman of the ruling General Council of the 149-nation WTO, said: “World Trade Organisation negotiators aim to give Vietnam a green light to join the global body in early October”

Glenne, who also steers Vietnam’s membership talks, told a negotiating session that he aimed to secure a final deal in time for the Council session scheduled for 10-11 October.
Glenne also said that Vietnam needed to come up with more information to show how it would comply, in areas ranging from tariffs and import quotas to farm subsidies and services market liberalisation. (source)

Vietnam hopes to join the WTO before Hanoi hosts an APEC summit in November which US President George W. Bush is expected to attend.

Amid fears of inflation and problems for financial institutions, China’s government has announced new measures to make it tougher for foreigners to invest in China’s property market.

The new rules will ban foreign firms and individuals from buying homes that they do not intend to live in.

They must have lived in China for at least a year before qualifying to buy housing and property under their own name.

“Though there has always been a claim that foreign capital pushes up prices, both the government and research department lacked detailed data on this so the name register will give a clearer picture”, said China Merchants Securities analyst, Yu Zhiyong.

China has already banned the building of luxury homes on new land to make affordable property available to poorer families and its central bank is tightening scrutiny on lending to limit “excessive investment and loans growth” (source: BBC.co.uk)

Starting from July 1st, 2006, in Vietnam, both foreign and domestic investors fall under the same Enterprise Law and the Investment Law.

Viet Nam’s new laws on investment and business operations, which have taken effect on July 1st, enable foreign investors to start any sort of business activities not classified as off-limits by the laws. Before that, they were licensed on a case-by-case basis and could only operate as far as their licenses permitted.

However, in order to avoid any conflict with other laws on a wide range of subjects such as land, credit, import-export, taxation, etc… are expected decrees and measures guiding the implementation of the new Investment Law. (source: Vietnam news)

As the real estate market in Romania is excessively unstable, the National Bank of Romania (BNR) is forced to intervene through its credit policies, said BNR councilor Adrian Vasilescu.

The real estate market is full of hope about the effects of the accession to the EU, said the official, expecting citizens of member states to rush in with lots of money to buy property in Romania.

The BNR governor’s aide drew the attention of realtors to two issues.
On the one hand, both citizens of EU member states and Romanians (about whom the institution recently revealed that their deposits in banks outside Romania has almost reached the one billion euro threshold) might be much less attracted by the local offer, which is already more expensive than that of other countries in the region.(source)