Shanghai municipal government is proposing preferential housing, health-care and education policies to attract people with the skills needed to make the city an international financial center from China and abroad.

China's State Council, the Cabinet, on March 25 passed a guidance policy to make Shanghai a global financial and shipping hub by 2020.[CFP]

A city official said Friday the local government was mulling a regulation to support the central government's goals for Shanghai.

China's State Council, the Cabinet, on March 25 passed a guidance policy to make Shanghai a global financial and shipping hub by 2020, and facilitate its development of modern service industries and an advanced manufacturing sector.

The Standing Committee of the 13th Shanghai Municipal People's Congress, the city's top legislature, held the 10th session Thursday to review the draft regulation.

It was the first city regulation since the Cabinet's guidance policy and was in line with the spirit of the policy, said Shen Guoming, a senior official of the committee's legal affairs commission.

The second chapter of the draft regulation requires the municipal government to "collaborate with other government agencies to build a finance information service platform and a global finance information service market."

Shanghai would encourage development in sectors including finance software research and development, finance information, accounting and auditing, investment consulting, finance legal service to improve services targeted at financial institutions.

The city will ramp up efforts on cooperation and experience exchange with neighboring provinces and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in the fields of finance market building, financial products innovation, banking risk control and personnel training, according to the draft.

The draft also stipulates that the local government should provide preferential housing, health-care and child education policies for financial experts both from home and abroad.

It gave no details of proposals for the preferential policies, but it pointed out the local office of exit and entry administration would simplify procedures that overseas experts must go through.

The draft stipulates that the municipal land and resource authorities would put land use need in the financial services districts on top of its agenda.

Local authorities would endeavor to improve office building conditions, telecommunications and other logistics services for financial institutions.

The Shanghai municipal government would set up a special finance development fund to reward the city's financial experts and financial innovation activities, without specifying the proposed fund pool, according to the draft.

The municipal government will later set up a detailed policy on the standards of these rewards.

The city would also beef up efforts on trademark and intellectual property rights protection for the financial innovations.

However, the committee gave no date for another review of the draft or its possible approval.

Yin Jianfeng, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank, told Xinhua that China was considering a more important role in the global financial arena.

Yin said the drive to build Shanghai into an international financial hub was a forward-looking strategy aimed at post-financial crisis times.

(Xinhua News Agency April 24, 2009)