BEIJING - About 30 Chinese companies will open branches or European headquarters in the Netherlands in 2011, a growth of 20 percent year-on-year, said officials.

The number of Chinese companies in the Netherlands will double or even triple in the coming years, said Hilde van der Meer, director of Amsterdam Inbusiness, the official foreign investment office of Amsterdam Metropolitan Area.

She said the 70 Chinese companies currently operating in Amsterdam have created about 1,000 jobs, which is a big number for a city with a population of only 780,000. Generally, 70 percent of employees at Netherlands-based Chinese companies are local people.

"All the Chinese companies in the country have had good performances in the past years," said Van der Meer. "They have a wide range of the businesses, such as consumer products, electronic equipment, logistics services and banking."

"We are trying to broaden both the cultural and business relationship between the Netherlands and China," said Eberhard van der Laan, the mayor of Amsterdam. "The business is based on the interests of the people."

He said Amsterdam and Beijing will cooperate on sustainable agriculture development.

"We are also working on increasing cooperation with cities in western China, such as Chengdu and Chongqing," said Bas Pulles, commissioner for foreign investment at the Netherland's Ministry of Economic Affairs.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd (ICBC), the world's biggest bank by market value, set up a branch in Amsterdam in January this year. According to the company, its profit in the first half of 2011 was top among ICBC's five European branches.

"It's a mutually beneficial relationship between ICBC and the Netherlands' government," said Zhang Weiwu, general manager of the Amsterdam branch of ICBC (Europe) SA. "We provide financial services to companies that invest in Europe. The local government also wants to attract more investment, so it offers many advantages to foreign companies."

Zhang said that most of the clients are Dutch companies, but an increasing number of Chinese companies, including Liugong Machinery Co, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and Yantai Wanhua Group, are in talks with ICBC and are considering opening businesses in the Netherlands.

China Daily

(China Daily 09/03/2011 page9)