Region improves business environment, quickens administrative services

Northeast China's Jilin province has been making great efforts to remove barriers to market access and streamline administrative approval procedures for enterprises, according to local officials.

Hongqi, a construction company in the province, received a special government fund worth 93.02 million yuan ($14.52 million) from Fusong county in Jilin last year.

"We originally thought that the government would not pay back the money they owed us several years ago, but the government fulfilled its promise and paid it back, which gives us much more motivation and confidence to invest, and we believe in the government policies," said a spokesman for the company.

Jilin set up a platform to supervise local government debt issues in January, which has helped it to repay its debts to enterprises.

The provincial government is determined to pay of all of its debt, which totals 7.68 billion yuan, within three years.

Besides the move to solve its debt issues, the Jilin provincial government has also stepped up its efforts to create a more favorable environment for economic development, said local officials.

They also said that Jilin is learning from the example of Zhejiang province, who trialed the country's first one-stop administrative service centers last year.

With the help of the centers, the government plans to ensure that 80 percent of administrative procedures can get solved in just one trip by the end of July.

The Jilin government also plans to publish new regulations on its business environment and standardize its work on legislation to create a fair and efficient system for enterprises.

Government departments in Jilin have implemented an array of innovative ideas and measures to solve the difficulties companies face when they apply for new construction projects. It also plans to implement better control on those projects.

As a result of streamlining its processes, the handling period for administrative procedures has been reduced. The time it now takes to register a business in the province has been reduced by seven days and the processing time for land use licenses has been shortened by 25 days.

Meihua Group has felt the benefits of such policies first hand for its project to manufacture 3 million metric tons of cornmeal, by receiving all the approvals needed to start the project 57 days ahead of schedule.

In the first quarter of this year, Jilin province gave the green light to a total of 10 new projects, more than three times the number of projects it approved in the same period last year.

Each of the 10 projects are valued at over 100 million yuan.

(China Daily 06/08/2018 page10)