(Yicai Global) Oct. 12 -- Optimistic about the prospects for business development in China, the Singapore Business Federation will send over 300 senior commercial representatives from 50 well-known companies to attend the fifth China International Import Expo.

Singaporean exhibitors, including Singapore Power Group, Crimson Logic, Pacific International Lines, DBS Bank, and United Overseas Bank, will take part in the CIIE, which will be held from Nov. 5 to Nov. 10, The Paper learned from an online press conference yesterday. Nearly one third of participants are enterprises that participate in the Expo again.

There will be five more exhibitors from Singapore at this year's CIIE than last year. Their 1,294-square-meter booths sit in the expo's areas for service trade, food and agricultural products, and consumer goods, showing Singaporean companies are willing to further explore the Chinese market.

Singapore's advantages in healthcare, education, and professional services are attractive to Chinese firms, said Lin Mingyan, chairman of the SBF. Singapore's domestic market is small, and China is an important market for Singaporean companies, he added, noting that attending the CIIE will drive more local firms to seek new opportunities for business partnerships in China.

The SBF will hold the Singapore-China Trade & Investment Forum during the CIIE to offer online and offline business negotiation channels to Singaporean enterprises and Chinese buyers. It will also open a digital platform during the expo to show videos to Singaporean firms that cannot attend the event, providing them with opportunities to interact with buyers.

China has been Singapore's largest trade partner since 2013. China's imports from Singapore totaled USD9.3 billion in the first quarter, up 5.8 percent from a year earlier. Singapore was also China's biggest foreign investor for the past nine years. In 2021, it invested USD10.3 billion in China, up 34.5 percent from 2020, per statistics released at the press conference.

Editor: Futura Costaglione