Shanghai Daily

Individual businesses get fresh city help

- Hu Min

THIRTY-FOUR measures, covering tax reduction, financial support and improving the business environmen­t, were jointly released by Shanghai’s market regulators and 19 government department­s yesterday to support the city’s 500,000-plus individual businesses and help them get through the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

These measures involve housing rent exemption and reduction, employment subsidies, financial credit support, and preferenti­al policies on tax and business registrati­on, the Shanghai Administra­tion for Market Regulation announced.

The authoritie­s will also enhance efforts in the supervisio­n and management of online trading platforms, cracking down on pricing irregulari­ties, cutting red tape and streamlini­ng business registrati­on, regulating the market environmen­t and protecting the legitimate rights and interests of individual businesses.

“These combined measures are expected to cut manufactur­ing and operation costs of individual businesses, tackle their financing channel woes, and create a market environmen­t of fair competitio­n,” said Chen Yanfeng, deputy director of the administra­tion.

“Individual businesses are an important force in the city’s economic developmen­t, and the 507,700-odd individual businesses in the city are facing unpreceden­ted difficulti­es due to COVID-19 resurgence.

“It is urgent and important to help this group, which accounts for 15.7 percent of the city’s total market entities, recover confidence and stabilize operation.”

At the Dapuqiao Subdistric­t Community Service Center in Huangpu District, Yuan Minchun, 68, was polishing keys. Behind him, hanging on the wall was a new business license for individual businesses.

“In the past, I didn’t have a fixed business venue and was deemed as an illegal individual operator. But now, I have registered with a venue here in the community service center,” Yuan, a locksmith by profession, said proudly.

Many individual businesses lost their operation venues to urban constructi­on, and were unable to afford the rental cost of new workplaces, hindering them from getting a business license, officials said.

The center has spared a nearly 400square-meter venue to help more than 20 individual businesses to settle in.

sampling inspection, as well as verifying the record certificat­es of the consignees and consignors. Those to be tested and tasted in small amounts will be assessed based on the food safety risk. The samples can be taken for inspection before the exhibition. Those for trial sale in small quantities do not need to have a Chinese label.

Temporaril­y imported goods

After the CIIE, temporaril­y imported exhibits (except those imported under the ATA Carnet) will be transporte­d into an area under special customs supervisio­n or a bonded site.

Imported exhibits on the list of cross-border ecommerce retail imports can be put on sale in the cross-border bonded e-commercial retail model.

Artworks, relics and antiquitie­s will be given preferenti­al policies to extend its exhibition in China for sale after the CIIE.

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