A total of?2,412 individuals?from 820 companies from Southwest China's Chongqing municipality have signed up to attend the third China International Import Expo, which will be held in Shanghai on Nov 5-10.

Chongqing's Liangjiang New Area hopes to identify new business partners at the expo and bring more intelligent equipment back home.

During the previous two expos, Liangjiang signed eight projects involving intelligent manufacturing, the intelligent city and cold chain logistics.

Of these, a 1.5-billion-yuan ($223.27 million) intelligent equipment manufacturing project signed at the first CIIE has been built, covering an area of 310,000 square meters with an annual output value of 37 billion yuan.

Chongqing's Xiyong Micro-Electronics Industrial Park also benefited hugely from the previous CIIE. During the second expo, the park signed off on the construction of a synthetic diamond project, becoming the first of its kind to provide large-scale diamond semiconductor materials for industrial use in China.

Chongqing will also focus on its food and agricultural product exhibition area at this year's CIIE, as food and agricultural products ranked first in Chongqing's purchases during past expos.

In spite of the COVID-19 outbreak, the products purchased at CIIE can still be transported to Chongqing via the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor and by the China Railway Express.

This year, Chongqing will keep organizing investment cooperation and exchange activities, to promote its thriving business environment and attract global companies to invest in the city.