In order to promote the market orientation of the city's sports industry, the city government issued a new policy that all the sports event projects which will be held in 2003 should be offered to the public for bidding.

On Nov. 26, the departments concerned invited the public to bid for 146 sports competition projects in 2003 with a total value of 23.4 million yuan. Among the projects, 13 were international sports events. The other national, provincial and city-level projects covered a large variety of sports events including field and track competition, football and martial arts. The bid attracted great attention from business circles. Representatives from nearly 100 enterprises participated in the bidding, which will be open for 20 days. The sports industry used to depend upon the government's support. The insiders believe that the new policy is expected to adopt a market orientation as a new management method in order to accelerate the pace of the development of the sports industry.

(top86)