IN BRIEF (Page 10)

Entrepreneur training

Young entrepreneurs in Jilin province can take part in a three-day training program jointly initiated by the Chinese Communist Youth League Jilin Committee and the Jilin SMEs Development Bureau.

The program targets about 1,000 young self-starters under 35, including self-employed households, private entrepreneurs and potential entrepreneurs with business plans.

The training program will last until August and include classes on laws, regulations, management and business negotiation skills. The program initiators hope that the knowledge will allow each small business to offer five more job opportunities in the future.

Loans for jobs

Enterprises in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region can enjoy discount loans and loan guarantees when they employ a certain number of jobless people.

According to the local government's policy, the businesses can get guaranteed loans up to 500,000 yuan when they employ 50 qualified staffers. The loan amount can be enlarged to 1 million yuan and a 50 percent- discount interest rate is offered in the following two years if 100 qualified persons are recruited.

For the labor-intensive enterprises, the guaranteed loans can be go from 100,000 yuan to 1 million yuan and two-year discount loans will be offered when the new hires account for more than 30 percent of the companies' total employment.

Migrant worker training

The Xi'an government will invest 12 million yuan this year to train 40,000 migrant workers in the city to improve their business skills and increase their income.

As the capital of Shaanxi province, Xi'an has the largest migrant workers' population in the country's northwestern region.

A training program for workers in the city's construction sector was launched in early May. Under the program, 2,600 migrant workers will receive one-year free training to learn vocational skills, workplace safety, and protection of their legal rights.

Fujian-Taiwan IT partnership

Fujian province will continue to strengthen its cooperation with Taiwan in animated games creation, integrated circuits manufacturing and other information technology service sectors, Li Chuan, deputy governor of Fujian province says.

According to Li, Fujian has attracted $6.5 billion in overseas investments for its IT industry so far. Among the total, some 34 percent, or more than $2 billion, were from Taiwan. And more than 60 Taiwan-based IT companies have established operations in the province, which realized 60 billion yuan in revenue last year, accounting for 30 percent of the total revenue of the province's IT industry.

Heilongjiang car owners up

With improving living standards, private car ownership in Heilongjiang province rose rapidly last year.

According to recent data released by the provincial statistics bureau, the northeastern province had 287,000 private passenger cars by the end of 2007, 65,000, or 29.1 percent, more than a year earlier.

The number of automobiles in the province reached 1.236 million, a year-on-year increase of 14.1 percent.

Training bases

Shanxi province will set up five national demonstration training bases for skilled talents, including three large-scale enterprise demonstration bases for training industry elites and two institution demonstration bases to educate senior skilled workers.

The policy is expected to enhance the training, evaluation and encouragement of skilled workers. The government will also supervise the management of the demonstration bases, according to local official Zhong Zhanrong.

(China Daily 05/19/2008 page10)