As for the issue of investment and financing system reform, the State Council held the executive meeting yesterday and proposed to further focus on unreasonable constraint over investors and to strengthen the reform. Therefore, it put forward a series of measures.
Offer more high-quality assets and introduce various investment through PPP
The country aggressively advanced investment and financing system reform and made some positive achievement in recent years. Since 2013, the number of projects approved by the country-level authorities has decreased by over 90 percent and the implementation time based on sampling survey also has been cut by more than 90 percent. Relevant reform and measures have stimulated social investment.
The executive meeting of the State Council proposed to intensify reform to streamline administration, delegate more powers, improve regulation and provide better services, and made new breakthrough in merging different forms of certification required of businesses into one certificate and relaxing restrictions over social investment; improve operational and post-operational oversight and service across the whole process, and replace the access investigation with informing enterprises via Internet and online monitoring by government; offer more high-quality assets and introduce various investment through public-private partnership (PPP) model; launch laws and policies which further simulates market vitality, create fair and legal environment, treat domestic and foreign-funded enterprises which are registered in China equally without discrimination, promote healthy development of private investment and reinforce attractiveness to foreign investment.
“Seen from the above measures, the policy mainly highlights private investment in a bid to boost the private investment,” Zhang Peng, assistant researcher at Institute of Economics of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the reporter of Shanghai Securities News in an interview.
Zhang analyzed that the measures of conducting operational and post-operational oversight, streamlining procedure for approval, liberating enterprises and allowing private enterprises and foreign-fund enterprises to enjoy the same treatment can help restore confidence in private investment.
Noticeably, as focus of investment and financing system reform, PPP model is mentioned again.
It was required at the executive meeting that government should provide more high-quality assets, introduce various investment through PPP model, and reutilize capitals in construction of new infrastructure and public utility to realize virtuous cycle. It should guide investment funds to invest in fields such as public services, projects of poverty alleviation and infrastructure and provide more support to “Made in China 2025” strategy.
Ding Bokang, expert at the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and Ministry of Finance (MOF), told the reporter that the meeting made it clearer that the country strives to drive the economy from virtual economy to real economy and relax policy of broadening investment in social fields. This will not only boost private enterprises’ investment confidence, but also activate social investment and attract foreign funds and social capitals to join in investment, construction and operation of infrastructure and public utility via PPP model.
Private investment has recovered significantly since this year which grew by 6.8 percent during January and May, much higher than the average growth of 3.2 percent for the whole year of 2016.
Private investment is expected to see improvement in the second half of this year. Particularly, recovering growth rate of investment in manufacturing industry will further push forward the private investment, said Zhang Liqun, an economist in the Development Research Center of the State Council.
Lower costs and enhance efficiency in logistics sector
Since April, the executive meeting of the State Council monthly put forward a slew of measures of cutting cost in order to fulfill the promise of lowering enterprises’ burdens by 1 trillion yuan. The measure launched at this meeting is to lower costs and enhance efficiency in logistics sector.
Jiang Zhen, researcher of the National Academy of Economic Strategy (NAES) of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), believed that as a basic industry supporting the development of the national economy, the logistics industry plays a leading role in the economy. Lowering logistics costs is a major way to change the mode of economic development and achieve transformation and upgrading of the economy.
Yesterday's meeting also mentioned that the audit results for the budget implementation and other fiscal revenue and expenditures for the year 2016 have been revealed to the public. Next step it will rectify problems, such as no implementation of policy and non-standardized use of funds, one by one.
The meeting proposed to take the rectification as an opportunity to speed up the implementation of reform measures, including streamlining administration, delegating powers, and improving regulation and services, take efforts to resolve excess capacity, alleviate poverty and maintain environmental protection, strengthen the management of spending on official overseas visits, official vehicles, or official hospitality and capital for poverty alleviation, medical care and other areas concerning people’s livelihood, strengthen regulation and risk prevention on key fields and prevent public funds from deviating or precipitating.
Translated by Vanessa Chen, Coral Zhong
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