Steadily develop offshore trade and enable high-quality development of foreign trade

In June this year, Chongqing Huidi Aviation Equipment Co., Ltd. completed the offshore trade of a batch of aviation lubricants valued at 430000 US dollars in Chongqing pilot free trade zone. In the past, the company's lubricants had to be transported to the mainland free trade zone through ports such as Singapore, and then shipped to Hong Kong through the mainland Free Trade Zone, and finally reached the enterprise. This mode of transportation has a high logistics cost. Under the offshore trade, the transportation route has changed from "Singapore Chongqing Hong Kong" to "Singapore Hong Kong". The normal time limit has been reduced from 30 days to 7 days, helping enterprises reduce 60% of logistics costs, shorten the transportation time by 77%, and save 200000 yuan of taxes. From January to may 2022, Qingdao area of Shandong pilot Free Trade Zone realized a year-on-year increase of 35% in new offshore trade volume; In the first half of 2022, the new offshore international trade balance of Hainan free trade port totaled US $8.552 billion, a year-on-year increase of 1.4 times... China's offshore trade is developing steadily.
In recent years, offshore trade, as one of the new modes of foreign trade, has been playing an increasingly important role in promoting the high-quality development of national and regional foreign trade. The state actively supports the development of offshore trade. In July 2021, the general office of the State Council issued the opinions on accelerating the development of new formats and new models of foreign trade, which clearly stated that "further strengthen the innovation of offshore trade business in the pilot free trade zone". In August of the same year, the State Council issued the measures on promoting the reform and innovation of trade and investment facilitation in the pilot Free Trade Zone, which proposed to support the development of offshore trade in the pilot free trade zone to release the potential of new trade modes. In March this year, the Ministry of Commerce said that it would cultivate a number of offshore trade center cities (regions) to continuously promote the innovative development of foreign trade. The high-quality development plan of foreign trade during the 14th five year plan mentioned that the development of offshore trade should be supported. We will innovate financial supervision, encourage banks to explore and optimize business authenticity audit methods, improve audit efficiency, and provide high-quality financial services for authentic and compliant offshore trade businesses. Support the development of offshore trade in Hainan free trade port, pilot free trade zone and other qualified places. Explore and cultivate a number of offshore trade operators with strong risk control ability and sound internal compliance system. Promote the establishment of national or regional offshore trade industry organizations.
Recently, at the lecture on cross-border and offshore trade financial services, Li Yong, deputy director of Dongying comprehensive free trade zone management committee, said that as a high-end form of international trade, offshore trade can drive the development of offshore finance, offshore taxation and offshore settlement. Offshore trade has become one of the important indicators to measure the degree of economic openness and trade development of a country or region. We should actively explore the benefits of developing offshore trade. The development of offshore trade is conducive to the gathering of high-end elements such as information, capital, talents, data and trade decision-making centers, and helps to promote the promotion of China's position in the global value chain and build a regional value chain and global value chain centered on China. As the logistics of offshore trade is not in China, for China, its development helps to avoid trade friction, promote the diversification of trade modes, and promote the transformation of trade modes to high-end forms.
Li Yong further analyzed that, from a macro perspective, the core of developing new-type offshore trade is to form a dense capital flow and form an international financial center. Developing new-type offshore trade will help improve the regional GDP scale and build a trade and financial center. At the same time, it can also gather the headquarters of multinational corporations, give play to the role of important nodes of multinational corporations, and play an important industrial agglomeration effect. From the perspective of enterprises, the new offshore trade helps to optimize the global resource allocation of multinational companies and enhance the status of enterprises in the global value chain. It helps multinational companies or offshore trading companies to optimize their tax planning, reduce costs, improve benefits, effectively avoid risks, and help enterprises to make use of global resources and policy advantages for overall development.
As for how to innovate the offshore trade supervision mode, Li Yong said that on the one hand, it will implement the subject classification supervision, explore the "negative list + positive list" supervision mode, guide the industry self-discipline, promote commercial banks to optimize business operation specifications according to the characteristics of offshore trade, implement differentiated management, and focus on related transactions, changes in revenue and expenditure amounts, large and high-frequency revenue and expenditure. On the other hand, we will implement systematic monitoring management, strengthen coordination and cooperation among departments such as commerce, customs, people's Bank of China and foreign exchange management, promote the construction of data information sharing platform, improve the joint monitoring ability of cross departments, and scientifically monitor cross-border capital flow and risk with classification, coordination and intelligent detection and analysis as the core. Expand the offshore trade supervision mode, from direct supervision to the combination of supervision and early warning.
At present, the international situation is complex and changeable, and enterprises are facing certain challenges in participating in international competition. Li Yong believes that enterprises should be encouraged to explore overseas markets. Give full play to the technological and innovation advantages of enterprises, actively carry out multi-level and multi angle international economic and trade cooperation, and obtain more overseas orders. Under the premise of controllable risks, we will pilot offshore trade settlement facilitation and honest cross-border capital payment.
"The characteristics of offshore trade determine that the business leading enterprises should be familiar with the laws, regulations and relevant affairs of the countries and regions where the business is exported and imported. They should be forward-looking and avoid problems in legitimacy." Li Yong said that special research, judgment and consultation mechanisms should be established to create personalized solutions for enterprises and meet the diversified business needs of enterprises.
"At the same time, we should also improve relevant supporting policies and services." In Li Yong's view, attracting multinational companies or offshore companies to carry out offshore trade business and formulating competitive tax policies are the key. Therefore, it is necessary to formulate relevant laws and regulations on offshore business tax and implement the tax collection and management rate in line with the international standard; Excellent and complete port infrastructure construction and management services are the necessary physical conditions for the development of offshore trade, which should be gradually improved; Gather headquarters enterprises and headquarters economy, timely issue relevant policy documents for the introduction of multinational headquarters according to the new situation, and enhance the attraction to multinational companies.