Shanghai cutting procedures for businesses

As one of the busiest container terminals in the world, Yangshan Port has solidified Shanghai's position as an international shipping hub. [Photo/IC]

Shanghai was praised in recent World Bank report, helping China rise in global rankings

In the Doing Business 2019 report released by the World Bank last October, China ranked 46th among 190 economies, rising 32 spots. Shanghai was one of the two Chinese cities surveyed.

Local authorities in the city said it adopted 24 reform suggestions of the World Bank in the past year, launched 43 special policies and supporting documents, while developing 20 cross-department information systems.

They said business environment experts from the World Bank affirmed the efforts Shanghai has made for improving its business environment.

The report shows the number of procedures for registering a company decreased from seven to four, and the time it take to start a business reduced from 22 days to nine days. The number of procedures for getting electricity connected has been reduced from five to three days and the average time for that reduced from 145 days to 34 days.

The number of procedures that deal with construction permits was reduced from 23 to 19, the time for getting the permits knocked down from 279 days to 169.5 days and the cost from nearly 200,000 yuan ($28,940) to 70,000 yuan.

Shanghai also offers a portal where all items related to examination and approval and more than 3,000 administrative service affairs of the city and district government agencies can be managed. Companies in the city handle 75,000 affairs through the portal on average every day.

It has also set up a big data center to make it easier to collect scattered data from different governmental departments. Application and examination procedures for administrative services have been streamlined and different departments have cooperated to handle related affairs.

Government service has been improved and a platform for consultation, complaint and suggestions has been established for companies and local residents. Hotline numbers have also been provided for them to get better government service.

Shanghai authorities have strengthened intellectual property protection and legal guarantees for the companies. They worked on market access standards, market regulations and supporting reform related to the judicial system. Authorities set up the China (Pudong) Intellectual Property Protection Center in July 2017 and implemented an action plan for strengthening IP law enforcement.

In the World Bank's report, the three indicators that Shanghai has the most remarkable improvement in terms of business convenience are related to handling construction permits, getting electric power and cross-border trade.

By the end of October 2018, Shanghai was home to about 2.04 million companies, meaning of every 1,000 people, 81 owned an enterprise. That statistic ranked first among China's provincial-level regions.

Next, the city will take more measures to strengthen business environment reform and the first thing is offering more convenient service. It will further reduce repeated administrative procedures among government agencies.

It will also combine information from the social credit platform with the portal mentioned previously and record dynamic data of companies as basic data for trustworthiness grading. It wants to allow promise keepers to enjoy more convenient services and oath breakers to be restrained.

Business environment is an important kind of soft power for a city, local authorities said. The waiting time for local people to get property ownership certificates has been reduced from 40-plus days to five days. Small and micro companies in the past had to spend about 200,000 yuan to apply for electric power access and now it's free. Declaration for export goods in the past took companies 24 hours and now it is 30 minutes.

songmengxing@chinadaily.com.cn