China to cut 310b yuan in fees for enterprises

The government should fully execute fee reductions as promised to the people, Premier Li Keqiang said at the State Council executing meeting on June 17.

According to the meeting, this year, measures that have been taken to ease corporate burdens include: exempting tolls on highways, reducing electricity costs for industrial and commercial business, telecommunication rates, and related governmental funds.

The Premier stressed further steps to secure employment, people’s livelihoods and market entities.

"Under the COVID-19 impact, many enterprises have encountered difficulties in work and production resumption," Premier Li said. "Under such circumstances, it is necessary to reassure the market with a clear signal that the fee-cutting measures will be fully executed to help them out."

The meeting decided to extend the policy of reducing industrial and commercial electricity rates by 5 percent, exempting civil aviation development fund and import and export port construction fees for airline companies, halving the ship oil pollution fund to the end of the year, and to reduce average fees of broadband and dedicated lines by 15 percent. Together with measures in the first half of the year, the fees cut in 2020 for enterprises will total more than 310 billion yuan ($43.8 billion).

The gap between government revenue and expenditure at the grass-roots level will worsen this year, the Premier said, adding that a direct channel to grass-roots level departments has been built to get fiscal funds as soon as possible.

Departments at the grass-roots level should mainly take the responsibilities of implementing fee-cutting policies for enterprises, and prohibiting unwarranted charges, Premier Li urged.

He also underlined efforts to prohibit excessive charges, illegal charges, and other unreasonable burdens on market entities. Charges for fund projects that were canceled, suspended, exempted or reduced should be delivered to enterprises.

And work should be done to regulate fees in major fields such as import and export, financing for enterprises, public utilities, logistics and administrative approvals, and improve the whole mechanism to eliminate arbitrary charges.

Premier Li also urged work to foster a market-oriented, law-based, and world-class business environment.

"Governments at all levels should tighten their belts, spare no effort in stabilizing economic fundamentals, to overcome the current difficulties with the people," Premier Li stressed.