Guangxi improves business environment

According to a third-party assessment, the overall level of Guangxi's business environment has climbed from the bottom of the country in 2018 to the middle. Many key indicators, such as starting a business, real estate registration, obtaining electricity, paying taxes, and handling bankruptcy, have reached international and domestic first-class levels.

The assessment was conducted by the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and was aligned with World Bank standards.

Currently in Guangxi, the average time to start a business has been reduced from 22.9 days in 2018 to 0.5 days, the real estate registration time has been reduced from 19 days to one day, and the average time to pay taxes has been reduced from 178 hours to 97.5 hours.

According to the 10 indicators evaluated by the World Bank, Guangxi's business environment is equivalent to 32nd place in the World Bank's evaluation of 190 economies. Among them, it ranks among the top 50 in the world in the six indicators of starting a business, access to electricity, real estate registration, protection of small- and medium-sized investors, execution of contracts, as well as handling bankruptcy.

The optimization of Guangxi's business environment has won the favor of enterprises. From January to May this year, 266,300 new market entities were added in the region, an increase of 14.39 percent year-on-year. Newly established foreign-invested enterprises increased by 63 percent year-on-year, while non-financial foreign investment agreements amounted to $1.48 billion, an increase of 198.8 percent year-on-year.

The improvement of its business environment has also promoted the convenience of cross-border trade in Guangxi. The overall customs clearance time for imports and exports is 36.25 hours and 0.58 hours faster than the national average respectively, with its clearance efficiency ranking in the forefront of the country.

In addition, mortgage loans for small and micro enterprises increased by 11 percent compared with the beginning of this year, while the processing time was reduced to 3.3 working days. The accumulated preferential treatment of deferred collection, interest reduction, and reduction of charges exceeded 1.2 billion yuan ($171.2 million), which greatly promoted the resumption of production following the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) earlier in the year.