Matchmaking event held as fair underway

The China Foreign Trade Centre joined hands with Bank of China’s Guangdong branch to host a business matchmaking event in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, on the Thursday afternoon, providing financing services for businesses participating in the 129th China Import and Export Fair, also known as the Canton Fair.

Among those in attendance were Chu Shijia, vice-president and secretary-general of the Canton Fair and director-general of the China Foreign Trade Centre; Ye Jijiang, deputy secretary-general of the fair and finance director of the center; Li Ruiqiang, governor of BOC’s Guangdong branch and Yuan Zhizhong, vice-governor of the BOC branch.

More than 200 companies from Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao took part in the event, either online or on site.

It is the third time that the Canton Fair has been held online after two sessions last year.

Chu said at the meeting that amid the COVID-19 pandemic, moving the fair to the cloud is conducive to maintaining the prevention and control of the virus and sustaining economic and social progress.

It helps to stabilize China’s foreign trade and foreign investment circumstances, promote international trade and a recovery in the global economy, and makes positive contributions to facilitating global industrial and supply chains, he said.

The move shows China’s resolution and determination to expand opening-up and its image as a responsible large country, he noted.

As a crucial trade promotion agency in the country, the China Foreign Trade Centre, which is the organizer of the Canton Fair, connects domestic and international markets.

Serving as a platform to give impetus to domestic market expansion, the center provides a key nexus of the dual-circulation growth pattern, thus playing a unique role in creating a new development model, Chu said.

The center will continue enhancing cooperation with BOC, leveraging the Canton Fair as a comprehensive opening-up platform, enriching financial services for the fair and helping participating businesses make full use the markets and resources at home and abroad, he said.

Both parties will cooperate to serve the innovative growth in foreign trade and the new development pattern, he noted.

Li from the BOC Guangdong branch said as a financial institution serving the Canton Fair for more than 60 years, BOC will continue its collaboration with the fair, providing high-quality and efficient services for businesses involved in foreign trade and foreign-funded companies, thus contributing to the growth of the export-oriented economy.

To provide full support for the Canton Fair, the BOC Guangdong branch has designated every April and October as its Canton Fair financial service months, when the bank provides customized services for the fair’s exhibitors, such as financing support, service upgrade and reduced transaction fees.

During the financial matchmaking event, experts from the BOC Guangdong branch introduced the bank’s financial solutions tailor-made to the fair to participating business representatives and talked with them about cooperation opportunities. On the site of the event, the bank signed deals with 10 exhibitors.