On the morning of April 15, after being inspected and accepted by General Administration of Customs of the PRC, Ministry of Finance, and State Administration of Taxation, the trade functional area of Suzhou Industrial Park Integrated Free Trade Zone successfully became the first of its kind in the country with the infrastructure and facility for supervision purposes in its 0.69-square-kilometer area in compliance with the relevant regulations and requirements. At the same time, WESCO (Suzhou) Trading Co., Ltd. was certified as a general VAT payer, enabling it to carry out import and domestic distribution business.

The trade functional area, located on the premises of SIP Integrated Free Trade Zone, goes in for pilot work in adjustment of related tax regulations and promotion of trade diversification. With full implementation of e-management at the checkpoint of the functional area, the Customs carries out unannounced inspection of non-bonded goods at the checkpoint. The goods entering the trade functional area from abroad, the special customs surveillance zone or the bonded supervision zone shall be bonded. The non-bonded goods shall be allowed to enter the trade functional area. The goods entering the trade functional area from inside China other than the area shall get refund of tax on the basis of the goods declaration for exportation, after the goods actually leave the exit port. And the qualified businesses in the trade functional area shall be certified as general VAT payers to enable them to do import and domestic distribution business.

SIP Integrated Free Trade Zone is the first of its kind in the country. Since its establishment in 2006, the Zone has created many "first" and "only" instances in the country in terms of customs clearance, business environment in the zone, innovation in new types of business, and etc. The Zone's honorary titles include "the first customs clearance express mode for air-land transfer in China", "China's first bonded logistics center (type B)", "China's first approved pilot zone for conducting global maintenance business", "China's first pilot zone for one examination for two applications by delivering and receiving parties", "China's first park for carrying out pilot reforms relating to the entry and exit health quarantine on special goods", and so on. In 2014, the Zone completed 22.06 billion US dollars of import and export volume and supervised 102.47 billion US dollars' worth of cargos, and took the lead among the national special customs surveillance zones in all indices.

At present, about 30 businesses (WESCO included) register in the trade functional area and will enjoy development advantage brought by trade diversification. In the future, the trade functional area will be another important driving force to boost SIP's transformation and upgrading, and its good practices in trade diversification in the special customs surveillance zone will be extended to other places of the country.