Moon Star Investment, a private industrial park developer in Pudong New Area, recently announced that it will reduce rents by half for 211 small and micro-sized enterprises in its 10 industrial parks for one month, adding up to a total of 4 to 5 million yuan ($713,694) in rent reductions.

Moon Star previously reduced rents for supporting businesses that provide assistance to other companies in the park.

"Reducing rents for enterprises will ease their financial burden and boost supporting businesses," said Liu Chang, director of the president office of Moon Star Investment.

"The rent reductions come at a time when we are generating less revenue and convey the message that Moon Star wants to help us get through these hard times," said He Haifeng, business director of Nuoken (Shanghai) New Materials Technology Co, which is located in an industrial park belonging to Moon Star on Lujiazui Financial Street.

Moon Star also provided three months of free land use for manufacturers of preventative supplies, including Shanghai C&G Safety Co, which was founded in 2005 and expropriated by the Shanghai government on Jan 27 to produce protective suits. The company now produces 5,000 such suits per day.

"Previously we had only R&D centers and proofing workshops in Pudong, while our plants were located elsewhere. After we were expropriated by the government and increased our production capacity, we realized we needed more production space," said Yu Bo, vice-general-manager of the company.

Yu said that in response, Moon Star offered the company 1,200 square meters of land to use for production.

"We can see that private companies have taken a beating from the epidemic. We just hope we can help them out by reducing rents," said Liu.