Per reporter Wu Linjing

For prefecture-level cities, GDP has entered a new "circle" after stepping over a trillion, so from time to time there are reserve forces eager to try.

Before the 7000 billion-level Yangzhou shouted "work hard for three or five years, strive to exceed trillions", and then 5600 billion-level Ordos also set the small goal of "impacting trillions".

Recently, Ordos held the 2023 Experience Exchange Meeting on Optimizing the Business Environment. At the meeting, Du Huiliang, deputy secretary of the Ordos Municipal Party Committee and mayor, said that Ordos will accelerate the task of building a first-class business environment in the country, and strive to enter the trillion GDP city within five years and enter the top 30 prefecture-level cities in the country.

Among the 24 trillion-level cities, Xi'an (GDP of 2022.1 trillion yuan in 15) is the only representative of the greater northwest region. If Ordos' wish is fulfilled in five years, it may become the "second trillion city in the northwest".

From 5600 billion to trillion, it is almost equivalent to creating another "Ordos". There is hope, because Ordos not only has a bright economic growth rate, but also the growth rate of fixed asset investment has made some brother cities unmatched, today's investment is tomorrow's basic plate, "chasing the wind and chasing the day" may bring it a gorgeous turn.

Of course, there are also threats, the same is the Northwest Energy "Gemini", Yulin's economic strength is above it, and it is also a high-quality player competing for the "second trillion city in the Northwest".

momentum

Ordos shouted out the "trillion" target, which seems to have been planning for a while.

In terms of volume, in the three years of the epidemic, its regional GDP has spanned 2 billion yuan, reaching 2022.5613 billion yuan by the end of 44. This total economic volume ranks second in the Hubao-Eyu urban agglomeration and first in Inner Mongolia.

In terms of growth rate, in 2020, 2021, 2022 and the first half of this year, GDP increased by -2.9%, 7%, 5.4% and 7.1% year-on-year. This economic growth rate often ranks third or fourth among the four cities in the Hubao-Eyu urban agglomeration.

In fact, the overall trend of Ordos' GDP is not superior, and the bright spot lies in the growth rate of its fixed asset investment, especially the growth rate of industrial investment. In 2020, 2021, 2022 and the first half of this year, the growth rate of industrial investment in Ordos has maintained double-digit growth, rising all the way, and reaching 67.2% in the first half of this year.

Ordos' strong "counterattack" in the field of investment has become that key variable. This trend has opened a clear gap with Yulin.

These two cities, which are within the bend of the Yellow River, have similar resource endowments and similar economic volumes. Originally, from 2017 to 2020, the growth rate of fixed asset investment in Yulin was faster than that of Ordos, and Yulin's energy industry investment accounted for 71.3% of industrial investment at that time. But since 2021, the situation has taken a sharp turn. For two consecutive years, the growth rate of Yulin industrial investment turned from positive to negative.

Previously, Bai Yongxiu, a doctoral supervisor at the School of Economics and Management of Northwest University and chairman of the Yongxiu Think Tank, analyzed that Ordos Sheng has not really developed in the layout of some non-energy industries.

When Yulin was still staring at the coal chemical industry, Ordos next to him proposed to "sheep coal and earth" and "chase the wind and chase the day" to build a new energy industry highland.

From January to May this year, the growth rate of fixed asset investment in Ordos was 1.5%, of which 39% came from new energy. In the analysis of economic operation in the first half of this year, the Ordos Statistics Bureau mentioned that "new energy investment increased by 9.30% year-on-year, and the growth of emerging momentum was strong".

The rising new energy sector may have become the reason why the overall GDP growth rate of Ordos in the first half of this year can exceed Yulin by 4 percentage points.

The new business card of new energy is still expanding. According to the small goal of "chasing the wind and chasing the day" set by Ordos, by the end of the "5000th Five-Year Plan", the city's new energy installed capacity will exceed 5000 million kilowatts, and the total output value of the "wind, solar and hydrogen storage vehicles" industry will exceed <> billion yuan.

Isn't this new 5000 billion yuan just enough to pull the difference between the current economic volume and the "trillion", and "create another Ordos" has a physical object that can be truly touched.

change

Ordos, which embraces new energy, has had some new partners in the past two years.

It can be seen from public reports that the objects of the strategic cooperation agreement signed with Ordos include a team of academicians from Tsinghua University, Huawei, CATL, and Tencent; The newly introduced enterprises in Ordos include Yingde Gas Group from Shanghai, LONGi from Xi'an, Huayou from Zhejiang, and Trina Solar from Jiangsu.

According to official news from Ordos, in the first half of this year alone, Ordos City signed 290 new investment projects, while 470 major projects have completed investment, with an investment completion rate of 66.6%. From January to July this year, the actual use of foreign capital in the city was 1.7 billion yuan, an increase of 18.03 times year-on-year, exceeding the target of 412 million yuan issued by the autonomous region five months ahead of schedule, hitting a new high in the past three years.

The most noteworthy new friend is the "Shanghai City Cluster". In 2021, the first batch of "hydrogen fuel cell vehicle demonstration city clusters" in the country were announced, which are Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Shanghai and Guangdong.

The "Shanghai City Cluster" is led by Shanghai Municipality, and six cities (regions) jointly form a "6+1" consortium with Ordos City, Suzhou City and Nantong City in Jiangsu Province, Jiaxing City in Zhejiang Province, Zibo City in Shandong Province and Ningdong Energy and Chemical Base in Ningxia.

This special city cluster is committed to building a fuel cell vehicle industry cluster with the largest industrial scale, the best institutional environment and the strongest overall competitiveness in China. Among them, the role of Ordos is to undertake the important task of realizing the commercial operation of fuel cell vehicles.

These new partners from the eastern coastal region have brought funds, projects, technologies and talents, and are also "forced" to build a first-class and more open business environment in the country in the run-in with Ordos.

According to local media reports, in the past two years, investment promotion and excellent merchants have been "topped" in Ordos: the city's conference on optimizing the business environment has been held as the first meeting of the new year for two consecutive years; Take the lead in carrying out legislative work to optimize the business environment in the whole region; Benchmarking Shanghai and Shenzhen, iteratively upgrading and launching version 4.0 to optimize the business environment...

Some changes are happening, such as running back and forth for department approval to today's "nanny-style service" and "digital government door number"; From the approval of the project to the completion of the acceptance and filing of the previous engineering construction project, the reduction from 195 working days to no more than 46 working days; From 3 working days to 1 working day offline and 0.5 working days online, the processing time for starting a business has been reduced from 289 working days; 510 certification materials and <> certification materials have been exempted from submission in batches...

Only by continuously optimizing the business environment can the imported enterprises retain and develop well, and continue to release the "gravity" to attract more enterprises and projects to settle down.

Of course, such as the streamlining of approval procedures and the reduction of handling working days are the initial stages of optimizing the business environment. The endless business environment requires Ordos to continue to enter the deep water area, exert efforts to the pain points of the lesion, and reform the system and mechanism, in order to obtain more high-quality projects and the favor of modern enterprises, and to enter a stronger confidence for "creating another Ordos".