The signing ceremony for a strategic cooperation agreement between Shandong Port Group (SPG) and Heze municipal people's government was held on Aug 4 in Heze, East China's Shandong province.

According to the agreement, the two sides will advance cooperation in areas such as promoting port-industry-city coordinated development, building logistics hubs for inland ports, innovating a mode for comprehensive hubs and setting up a comprehensive cooperation mechanism, in a bid to help Heze advance an innovation-driven development strategy.

Located at the intersection of four provinces – Jiangsu, Shandong, Henan and Anhui– Heze connects coastal ports in the east and links hinterland regions in the west. Thanks to its unique transport network, Heze has grown into an important logistics hub for domestic and foreign supply chains.

This cooperation arrangement is expected to help SPG give full play to its role as a fundamental facility. Efforts will be made to rapidly promote regional logistics development, improve Heze's comprehensive competitiveness in the open economy, and build Heze into a new highland and regional center for open economic development.

More efforts will also be made to help Heze integrate into a new development pattern whereby domestic and foreign markets boost each other, with domestic market as the mainstay. This way, SPG will step up efforts to maintain stability on the six fronts and security in the six areas, better serve national development strategies and the province's replacement of old growth drivers with new ones to ensure high-quality development.

Huo Gaoyuan, SPG's Party secretary and chairman, said that upholding the principle of building closer ties with the Heze Party committee and government, getting more deeply involved in Heze's regional economic and social development, and making more contributions to Heze's local economic growth based on unimpeded logistics channels, SPG will leverage its role as a platform that gathers resources.

SPG will also work with Heze to attract investment and talent, build specialized logistics parks and industrial parks, and promote cooperation in finance, trade, cruise culture and tourism as part of efforts to build a new mode for port-industry-city development among regions in the southwest of the province.