Watchdog monitoring quality management of SMEs nationwide

China's top market watchdog said it will help micro, small and medium-sized enterprises acquire quality certification to improve their overall management performance.

Pan Lifen, deputy director of the certification supervision department of the State Administration for Market Regulation, said the administration is implementing a campaign targeting the quality management of SMEs.

The quality certification, widely accepted as a passport in the market economy and international trade, has long been neglected by small and micro enterprises mainly due to the lack of related techniques and human resources, Pan said.

The department surveyed more than 15,000 small and micro enterprises, which have no more than 50 employees each, in 10 sectors last year and found 27.1 percent of these companies had defects in quality management system and suffered bad performance.

The survey further detected that the result should blame the neglect of the executives, poor understanding of the standards and incompetence of the management personnel. In fact, there were a total of 532 certification organizations across the nation dated to the end of May this year, which had accumulatively issued more than 2 million valid certificates to 675,000 companies for their products, services and management systems, Pan said.

"We have developed an online system to provide free training to the small and micro enterprises," Pan said, adding that "more than 110,000 people in 350 cities and 2,300 counties have registered and received the training".

The department will accelerate the certification in the sectors of food, agricultural products, consumption goods, equipment manufacturing and services among the small and micro enterprises to improve their competitiveness and internal development momentum, she noted.

The State Administration for Market Regulation has been one of the organizers of the China International SME Fair, which opens on Monday in Guangzhou to drive the growth of SMEs globally.