Tatarstan President visits Special Economic Zone in Urumqi

On April 15, during their working trip to China, members of Tatarstan delegation led by Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov visited the Urumqi Economic and Technological Development Zone.

The Urumqi Economic and Technological Development Zone was established in 1992 based on the decision China’s central government and is located in one of Urumqi regions. It has a planned management area of 480 square kilometers, including 133 square kilometers for industrial enterprises.

Tax remissions and all necessary infrastructure facilities are provided for resident companies. Besides production facilities, there will be 2.6 million square meters of housing by 2016 in the zone. A railway station for high-speed trains will also be built there. The trains will take passengers from Urumqi to Beijing for 12 hours at a speed of 300 km/h.

According to representatives of the Urumqi Economic and Technological Development Zone, the spectrum of production facilities is quite diverse there. This includes metallurgy, electric power, food processing, electronics and medical equipment, machine-building. By and large, 358 medium and large-size enterprises have settled in the zone, including such well-known companies as Volkswagen, Coca-Cola, Heineken.

The total amount of investments in the economic zone in 2012 exceeded 40 billion yuan ($6.6 billion).

A presentation of the economic zone was made for Tatarstan President and members of the delegation. In particular, the exhibition of products of the resident companies and single-window registration system were shown to them.

Rustam Minnikhanov was interested in the experience of creating the special economic zone and gave a task to Tatarstan Investment Development Agency to study it in more details.

At the end of the visit Rustam Minnikhnov made a note in the distinguished visitors’ book of the Urumqi Economic and Technological Development note.