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Dalian software fair due next week

By Zhu Chengpei and Zhang Xiaomin (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-06-12 09:49

The 6th China International Software and Information Service Fair (CISIS) will be held from June 18 to 22 in Dalian, Northeast China's Liaoning province.

"As the only national IT expo approved by the State Council, it is becoming more and more influential," said Jiang Qinyu, Director of Dalian Information Industry Bureau at a news briefing Wednesday.

According to Jiang, only 200 companies attended the 1st software fair in 2003, but the number climbed to 650 last year with more than 30 delegations from domestic cities and provinces already confirmed to participate in this year's fair.

Elsewhere, in the past five years more than 40 of the world's top 500 companies have attended the fair. Showing it's capacitiy to attract since the 2nd year, at least 30 percent of the total 30,000 sq m exhibiting area has also been arranged for international businesses.

"The fair is acting as a window and bridge for international cooperation in the software sector," said Jiang.

In addition, over 60 percent of the VIP speakers of the International Software and Information Services Forum and Entrepreneuros Summit, the main forum of the fair, will becoming from abroad.

This has seen nearly half of the attendees to the Annual Outsourcing Summit of the fair being overseas outsourcing providers.

Jiang revealed this year's expo will deliver China's first "outsourcing competitiveness white paper" and set up the first domestic "credit system construction forum for the software industry".

Dalian is one of China's major software production and export bases. Its software industrial sales volume reached 21.5 billion yuan in 2007, compared with 200 million yuan in 1997. The software exports were $720 million last year, said Dai Yulin, vice mayor of Dalian.

The city boasts nearly 700 software companies, 30 percent of them foreign-funded like IBM, Intel, and General Electric. Three local companies named Neusoft, Hi-Think, and Hisoft also rank as the top three in China's software export market.

"The fair helps the local businesses to expand fast. It also helps the city to attract more foreign investment especially from world famous companies. Moreover, it helps other domestic cities to boost their software industry," said Dai.