[photopress:zone_Caofeidian_Industrial_Zone.jpg,full,alignright]Tangshan may sell shares to help finance a $29 billion industrial park, the centerpiece of the nation’s largest land-reclamation project.
We need to get this amount into some sort of perspective. The 17-year Three Gorges Dam project, set to be completed next year, will cost an estimated RMB180 billion ($26 billion). So Tangshan is looking for an investment into its industrial park of rather more than has been spent on the Three Gorges Damn project. It is a large amount of money to raise.
Xue Boxun, the project’s deputy director, said to do it ownership of the Caofeidian Industrial Zone, including a port, may be transferred to two city-owned investment companies that would then offer stock to local or overseas investors.
He said, ‘We are looking for the quickest way to go public.’ He did not give a timetable which seems a wise move.
[photopress:zone_Caofeidian_Industrial_Zone2.jpg,full,alignleft]Tangshan, is seeking to reduce its reliance on state loans after the central bank pushed borrowing costs to a decade-high. Caofeidian goes through almost $12 million a day at what managers call ‘the biggest construction site in China,’ where an area almost twice the size of Manhattan has been reclaimed from the sea.
Caofeidian may struggle to compete for private funds with other industrial zones in cities such as Tianjin, which is closer to Beijing and boasts an economy twice the size of Tangshan’s, said Wu Bin, who helps manage about $3 billion in Chinese stocks at Martin Currie Investment Management Ltd. in Shanghai.
‘There are many options nearby that are already proven,” Wu said. ‘If they invest in Tianjin, that’s closer to the actual economy.’
Source: Bloomberg
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