Experts weigh in on FTZ management

Exploring new ways to improve the management of the growing number of enterprises in Shanghai's pilot free trade zone is one of the main priorities for regulators, economists said yesterday.

"To build an oversight system that will give full play to the role of government while allowing market to function is key to reforms in the pilot free trade zone," Xu Mingqi, economist at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the Fudan International Forum of Management.

"Building a system to prevent illicit competition and setting up an integrity management system to facilitate authorization, streamlining supervision to cut operational costs for enterprises are among priorities for the regulator," Xu said.

By the end of June, the zone had attracted 10,445 enterprises, including 1,245 foreign-funded companies, since it replaced the approval system with a registration system for business affairs.

Sun Lijian, a professor of economics at Fudan University, said financial regulation in the FTZ now lags behind reform of investment management, which would lead to arbitrage activities and thus pose a risk to the zone's overall operation.