The State Council released a circular on May 6th, approving the establishment of integrated pilot zones for cross-border e-commerce in 46 cities and areas, including Meizhou, Huizhou, Zhongshan, Jiangmen, Zhanjiang, Maoming and Zhaoqing, pushing the total number of Guangdong’s integrated pilot zones for cross-border e-commerce to 13.

(File photo / Nanfang Daily)

As required by the circular, the new zones should draw experience from the first four batches of pilot zones to drive industrial upgrade and transformation, boost brand building, and propel cross-border e-commerce across the board to catalyze higher-quality development of trade.

To create a fair and sound business environment for the integrated pilot zones, more supportive measures to cross-border business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce will be implemented in terms of innovations in technical standards, business procedures, supervision system and others.

In the meanwhile, the statistical system of cross-border e-commerce will be further improved, with measures being carried out supportive to enterprises in the zones, including exemptions from value added tax and consumption tax.

The 7 newly added cities have pushed the total number of Guangdong's integrated pilot zones for cross-border e-commerce to 13, when added to Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Zhuhai, Shantou and Foshan, which had previously been chosen as integrated pilot zones.

Despite the impact of the pandemic, the province saw great development in cross-border e-commerce figures during Q1. According to the data of Guangdong Branch of the General Administration of customs, Guangdong's cross-border e-commerce import and export in Q1 reached 13.09 billion yuan, an increase of 4.7%, ranking first in China.

"The pandemic has restricted trade between countries. Countries all over the world will attach greater importance to cross-border e-commerce platforms. This is an important opportunity for foreign trade businesses in the current climate", said Bai Ming, deputy director of International market research institute, Ministry of Commerce. Promoting the development of cross-border e-commerce is an important direction of China’s foreign trade transformation, with its advantages having been further revealed during the coronavirus crisis.

Bai explained that as a leading province in terms of foreign trade, Guangdong not only has solid offline business support, but also numerous flagship programs in online cross-border commerce. "Increasing the number of integrated pilot zones will be beneficial to online trading platforms, and the logistics industry", said Bai.