National Development and Reform Commission, Circular on Duly Carrying out the Delegation of the Authority to Check and Approve Outbound Investment Projects to Lower-level Authorities

Issued: February 14 2011

Applicability: Investment projects in the Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Regions shall be governed by the Circular. Investment projects in the Taiwan region shall be handled in accordance with the Measures for the Administration of Investment in Taiwan by Mainland Enterprises (Article 7).

Main contents: Resource development-type overseas investment projects of local enterprises with an investment amount of US$300 million or less from the Chinese party and non-resource development-type overseas investment projects with an investment amount of US$100 million or less from the Chinese party (excluding special projects, i.e. overseas investment projects involving special and sensitive sectors such as the operation of basic telecommunications services, development and utilisation of cross-boundary water resources, land development on a large scale, main grids, news and media) shall be subject to the check and approval of the provincial-level development and reform departments of the local province, autonomous region, municipality directly under the central government, city with independent development plans or the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corp. Where an enterprise subject to the administration of the central government intends to participate in the aforementioned overseas investment projects, it shall make a decision of its own accord and file a record thereof with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). Resource development-type overseas investment projects with an investment amount of at least US$300 million from the Chinese party and non-resource development-type overseas investment projects with an investment amount of at least US$100 million from the Chinese party shall still be subject to check and approval by the NDRC (Article 1).