HANGZHOU - Fourteen foreign companies signed contracts worth $4.8 billion on Monday to do businesses in the pilot free trade zone in East China's Zhejiang province.

The contracts were among the 20 projects signed at the first international petroleum and natural gas enterprises conference held in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang, on Monday to promote the international commodity trade liberalization, a major goal of the Zhejiang FTZ.

The conference attracted domestic and overseas firms, including Chevron, DuPont, BP, Statoil and Sinopec, to participate in the construction and operation of the FTZ.

The projects focused on storage, transport, trade and processing of petroleum products, international finance and aviation, said Ma Guohua, deputy director of the Zhejiang FTZ Administrative Committee.

The 20 projects involved a total value of 57.4 billion yuan ($8.7 billion). Sixteen were related to the petroleum industry with a combined value of 37 billion yuan, 65 percent of the total value.

Li Ning, president of Windecker (China) Limited, said the company signed a deal with the Zhoushan city government to invest 5.5 billion yuan in building a manufacturing and training base at the Zhoushan aviation industry park, which will have a maximum annual capacity of 400 seaplanes.

The Zhejiang FTZ, inaugurated in April, is one of 11 FTZs.

A major task of the Zhejiang FTZ is promote commodity trade liberalization and improve global commodity allocation, with the whole industry chain of oil products as the core.