In May, the desert comes alive with grass and birds. Entering the Alxa High-Tech Zone, one sees key projects under intensive construction, a busy and inspiring scene everywhere. Project construction is a new driving force for promoting high-quality development of the industrial economy. This year, the Alxa High-Tech Zone is going all out to accelerate the progress of key projects and ensure they advance with both quality and quantity. As of the end of April, the zone had resumed construction on 15 projects, with a resumption rate of 83%, and had completed a cumulative planned investment of 830 million yuan.

At Inner Mongolia Qihui Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., the second-phase pharmaceutical intermediates project has entered the trial production stage. In 2019, the company invested a total of 1 billion yuan to build a pharmaceutical intermediates project, constructing in two phases five veterinary bulk drugs: albendazole, fenbendazole, mebendazole, diclazuril, and closantel. After the project is fully completed and put into operation, it can achieve annual sales revenue of 1 billion to 1.2 billion yuan, pay 110 million yuan in taxes, and create 300 new jobs. The first phase of the project, with an investment of 400 million yuan, was officially completed and put into operation last year; its products are exported in large quantities and orders are full. "Our second-phase project has been installed and debugging has been completed; trial production has begun. Trial production will be completed by the end of May and full production reached. After that, production and sales can reach 500 million to 600 million yuan," General Manager Zhang Pinghu told reporters.

New projects are also accelerating their pace. At the construction site of the first-phase direct reduced iron project of Inner Mongolia Zhongsheng Technology Co., Ltd., workers are capping the main structure of the project. The project has a total investment of 2.63 billion yuan. In the early stage, coke oven gas will be used as the reducing agent; later, hydrogen-rich gas will be used to produce direct reduced iron, an indispensable raw material for clean steel, high-quality steel, and special steel production. The project will also include a supporting captive power plant. After completion, it can produce 480,000 tons of direct reduced iron annually, reduce carbon emissions by 20 tons per year, and generate annual profits and taxes of nearly 100 million yuan. It is expected to be officially put into operation in August. "One of our systems can generate 200 million kWh of electricity per year, overturning China's traditional ironmaking process. By next year, another line will be in production, also 480,000 tons, and we plan to carry out production on 10 consecutive lines," said Xi Yuanlong, executive deputy general manager of the company.

It is reported that in 2021, the Alxa High-Tech Zone plans to implement 43 key construction projects in 7 major categories, with a total investment of 35.5 billion yuan and an annual planned investment of 6.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 36%. To strengthen key project construction, multiple departments in the Alxa High-Tech Zone are actively engaging with enterprises, intensifying coordination and scheduling of project implementation progress, helping enterprises coordinate guarantees for production factors such as water, steam, sewage, and transportation, continuously enhancing service awareness, streamlining procedures, and improving service efficiency, so as to create a sound construction environment and external conditions for major project construction and ensure orderly progress.

"We have formulated a project advancement timetable and are using chart-based management for projects. We will continue to implement the mechanism under which leading officials are linked to projects and projects are scheduled regularly, implement the commitment system for enterprise-invested projects, ensure the guarantee of various factors, promote one-on-one assistance and point-to-point services, implement one policy for each enterprise, and conduct collective diagnosis for projects that have not yet started, so as to ensure smooth project progress in 2021," Zhao Longgang, director of the Development and Reform and Economic Statistics Bureau of the Alxa High-Tech Zone, told reporters.

It is understood that in recent years, with the goal of creating a national high-tech zone, the Alxa High-Tech Zone has consistently taken "green" as the underlying color of high-quality industrial economic development, vigorously developed the circular economy, and comprehensively built an eco-industrial park. It has now basically established a circular economy pattern dominated by salt chemical, coal chemical, fine chemical, strategic emerging, and green ecological industries. Since the "13th Five-Year Plan," the proportion of the output value of the fine chemical industry in the total output value of industrial enterprises above designated size in the Alxa High-Tech Zone has increased from 12% to 23%; the new materials industry is booming, with output value growing from nothing to something and from something to excellence, accounting for 10%. As an industrial concentration area of Alxa League, in 2020 the high-tech zone focused on negotiating 138 projects, signed 36 with a total investment of 46.63 billion yuan, and landed 30 with a total investment of 35.77 billion yuan. It achieved 5.01 billion yuan in actual funds in place for investment attraction. Its indicators such as the number of signed projects, investment amount, and number of landed and started projects all rank first in the league.