China's Ministry of Commerce will leverage the free trade zones (FTZs) to further expand opening up in sectors of commodities, services, capital and some other fields, an official with the ministry said in Beijing on Friday.
Speaking at a press conference, Zhu Bing, director of the Department of Foreign Investment Administration, said the ministry will promote the FTZs to carry out pilot explorations on further opening up.
According to Zhu, the ministry is in the process of formulating a series of documents to introduce a set of reform measures aimed at finding more successful experiences that are replicable and scalable in further deepening reform comprehensively.
"In the opening up of key areas, we will conduct in-depth research on leveraging the FTZs to further open the markets of commodities, services and capital. We will focus on the negative lists for foreign investment and cross-border trade to pioneer opening up in relevant sectors," said Zhu.
The ministry will also support the FTZs to conduct differentiated explorations in areas such as bulk commodities and biomedicine, aiming to promote innovation and development across entire industry chains.
China's commerce ministry to leverage FTZs to further expand opening up
China's top regulators on Monday announced a series of detailed measures to further ease the burden on companies and step up support for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
The specific measures include addressing the practical difficulties troubling small and micro market entities in production and operation and will keep enhancing targeted and differentiated assistance to individually owned businesses, said Luo Wen, head of the State Administration for Market Regulation, at a press conference in Beijing on Monday.
And the government will strive to effectively alleviate the burden on enterprises and make more efforts to reduce institutional transaction costs, he said.
"We will vigorously advance the reform on one-stop government services, pushing the services for enterprises to shift from 'multiple places, multiple windows and multiple times' to 'one place, one window and one time.' We will make greater efforts to reduce the burden on enterprises and carry out special inspections and random checks on illegal charges levied on businesses with the focus on key charging bodies and key industry sectors," said Luo.
He said the financial supervision departments will strive to step up their efforts on support for the real economy to alleviate the financing difficulties of small and micro businesses.
Luo emphasized the need to tailor financial products and services for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, and implement differentiated arrangements in terms of credit lines, interest rates, financing maturities, and repayment methods.
"We will promote the combined effect of equity, funds, bonds and other financing instruments, and realize an amount of 300 billion yuan (about 42.4 billion U.S. dollars) of credit enhancement and granting for quality financing each year, which will fully benefit all types of businesses," said Luo.
Top regulators release plans to support SMEs by streamlining services and boost financing
