Shanghai Daily news

The city's suburban Nanhui District is issuing new measures to lure more investment as the amount of vacant land suitable for industrial purposes, which used to ensure the district income, is decreasing.
Only seven out of the district's 41 investor-consulting companies have 75-square-kilometers of land available for manufacturing use before 2020. So the rest of the firms have to find other ways to raise money.
To harmonize the district's rapid development with its limited industrial land, the district is changing its original land-for-investment method. Instead, it is pondering various ways to attract more investors.
Those measures include encouraging acquisitions, which usually helps to raise capital, constructing more office buildings and developing service industries.
"As Nanhui District's development is speeding up, the land available for industrial use is being reduced. So we need to raise the productivity of each (hectare) to break through the blockage." said Cao Youcai from the district's investor consulting office.
According to the district government, production capacity of each manufacturing enterprise should be more than 2 million yuan (US$240,964) per mu (0.07 hectares). Most of the enterprises, built after 2000 and accounting for one-third of local manufacturing firms, are able to complete the required task. Some of the district's private firms, most of which were set up in 1996, failed.
In 1996, about 1,000 local collective enterprises were shifted into private companies. Eight years later, however, some of them are facing tough times.
So the district is encouraging well-operated enterprises to acquire the old and less-profitable ones to renovate the old factories and to save the land.
"The market will naturally kick out the less competitive firms," said Cao.
According to Cao, local investment consulting companies are pursuing each enterprise's performance scrupulously to plan their areas' future.
There has been already a merger between a Shanghai-Hong Kong joint venture and a local firm in the district's timber industry.
Apart from keeping on the development of local manufacturing industry, which so far has accounted for about 54 percent of the district's Gross Domestic Product, the district is developing its real estate and service industry, covering logistics, accounting and shipping agents.
As the first phase of Yangshan Deep Water Port with the throughput of 2.2 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) will be put into operation next year, several kinds of industries concerned, such as logistics and shipping agents, are expected to be developed.
The municipality is planning tactics for the port's future development, yet no specific measures have been revealed. The district only confirmed that high-tech sectors will be the dominant industries to be developed with the port.
At the same time, the district is going  to build offices around Huinan Town      and Luchaogang Town to cater to the port's future development.