Country set to reduce fee collection for enterprises

The executive meeting of the State Council, China’s Cabinet, on Wednesday decided to take measures to further cut fees collected from enterprises. According to the meeting, presided over by Premier Li Keqiang, measures will be taken to reduce logistic costs of enterprises and a reform of electricity pricing concerning provincial-level power grids will be pushed to cut the price of transmission and distribution. Enterprises will see fee payments cut by about 120 billion yuan ($17.4 billion) a year thanks to the new policy. The meeting also required that relevant departments should take measures to eliminate irregular fee charges. sharing of government information. According to the document, measures will be taken to satisfy public demand for better governance and services and make it easier for the public and enterprises to deal with government agencies. It required that the integration and sharing of government information be accelerated and key tasks and implementation procedures for integrating information systems of State Council departments and local governments should be clarified. The work of interconnecting the two-level government information systems should be carried out in an orderly manner and duplicate investment must be avoided, according to the document. The People’s Bank of China, the central bank, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, together with the Ministry of Commerce and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, released a document on facilitating financing of small and micro-enterprises. According to the document, relevant ministries and departments should support account receivable-based financing of enterprises and build service platforms for carrying out financial services. Accounts receivable serve as important floating capital of enterprises and allowing them to use accounts receivable to get loans from banks will ease their financing pressure. The document required that relevant departments should jointly establish a coordination mechanism and promote information sharing to carry out the plan. The central bank should closely monitor such business to ensure the program is carried out smoothly, the document said. By the end of 2020, the document said, flood-prevention standards should be met along small and mid-length rivers and hidden flooding risks in small reservoirs should be eliminated, so that the country can improve its comprehensive floodfighting and flood-prevention capacities to safeguard people’s lives and property security and promote sustainable and stable social and economic development.