SOE reform beats expectations in 2016

2017-02-16
english.gov.cn/People’s Daily

Reform in State-owned enterprises (SOEs) is injecting powers to enterprises, and with a total revenue of 1.23 trillion yuan, taxation of 2.1 trillion yuan, and 96 out of 102 gaining profits in 2016, their overall performance has surpassed expectations.

To better support the national guideline on SOE reform, seven support documents were introduced last year, and the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) and other related departments also issued 36 circulars.

The reform covers fields such as transformation of ownership, cost reductions, production capacity elimination, and investment and innovation, which saw great results last year.

Data showed that the 102 SOEs cut 2,730 affiliated legal entity enterprises. More than 92 percent of the subsidiaries of SOEs changed their ownership, and 68 percent are now in mixed ownerships.

In 2016, central enterprises cut production capacity of 10.19 million tons and resettled redundant staff of 33,126 in the steel and iron industry; cut 34.97 million tons and resettled 41,945 in the coal industry, and weeded out 398 “zombie enterprises”.

And their cost was also lowered, with 14 SOEs seeing a year-on-year decrease of more than 10 percent last year.

This year, the reform will be further improved. At the start of this year, an investment negative list for SOEs was released, which helped them make good investments.

SOE reform is still the key work of this year, and SASAC said it will take various measures to promote the reform and add vigor to SOEs.