Sichuan lowers operating cost of private enterprises

Qingyijiang Anhydrous Sodium Sulphate Company in Hongya County was still in normal production during the holiday.

"The market situation is good, and we have seized the new opportunity for development." Yu Jianbing, general manager of this company, cannot hide his happiness.

Established in 2001, this private enterprise is facing a good opportunity for development now.

With the support of Sichuan's electricity system reform policy, this company has built a new production line with an annual output of 500,000-ton anhydrous sodium sulfate, "with the preferential electricity price, we can reduce operating cost about 15 million ($2 million) a year," Yu Jianbing said.

In November last year, Sichuan province issued the Opinions of the CPC Sichuan Provincial Committee and People's Government of Sichuan Province on Promoting the Healthy Development of Private Economy, which explicitly proposed to reduce the cost of factors and play a "combined fist" in the aspects of labor cost, land cost, energy cost and logistics cost, thus allowing the many private enterprises in Sichuan to enjoy different levels of electricity price concessions and dividends of other cost reduction policies.

A group of data provided by the Reform Office of the CPC Sichuan Provincial Committee a few days ago showed that by continuously deepening the reform of the electricity system, Sichuan reduced electricity bills by 880 million for more than 10.39 million households and by more than 14 billion for enterprises last year.

Sichuan has issued policies and measures in two batches since April this year, exceeding the target of reducing the average electricity price in general industry and commerce by another 10 percent.

The two batches of price reduction measures are expected to reduce the electricity expenditure of enterprises by about 3.6 billion this year, with a reduction rate up to 11.73 percent, and the reduction amount and percentage are both higher than last year's, ranking top in China.

Sichuan is fully implementing the "cut taxes and administrative fees" policy. The Sichuan Private Economy Development Report shows that in the first half of this year, the total amount of tax relief for private economy in Sichuan reached 68.84 billion, up 4.5 percent from the same period of last year, which means this policy has achieved remarkable results and further reduced the burden on private enterprises; among them, about 1.9 million private enterprises in Sichuan enjoyed the inclusive tax relief policies for small and micro enterprises, with tax relief of 5.4 billion in total and 2,842 per household.

The reduction of labor costs and the implementation of the policy of reducing the nominal rate of social insurance contributions have reduced the burden on enterprises by nearly 20 billion.

In the next step, Sichuan will expand the coverage of unemployment insurance and bring all units and employees within the scope of the policy system into the converge of insurance contributions, so as to scale up the unemployment insurance fund and further increase support for private enterprises.

To reduce land cost, Sichuan Provincial Development and Reform Commission has launched 66 projects to private enterprises with a total investment of more than 330 billion.

In the next step, Sichuan will fully ensure the land use for private enterprises, and provide efficient and high-quality assurance and services in the planned targets matching, land use pre-examination and approval.

To reduce logistics cost, Sichuan has taken relevant measures, proposing to increase efforts to cut taxes and administrative fees, and strive to be China’s first batch of comprehensive reform pilot provinces of reducing costs and increase efficiency in the logistics industry.

In the next step, Sichuan will standardize all kinds of intermediary service charges for road freight such as certification, evaluation, inspection and testing, establish a list of fees charged from enterprises involved and publish it to the public.