China Sets Up Bureau for Private Economy Affairs!
In a significant move to further bolster the private sector, a crucial driving force for the country’s economic output, China announced on Monday that it has set up a bureau specializing in promoting the private economy’s development under the country’s top economic planner.
The latest arrangement has sent a reassuring signal to domestic private players that the country is resolved to improve the business environment by taking concrete actions to implement previously launched supportive measures in broader efforts to shore up the world’s second largest economy, which has been on a bumpy road of recovery in recent months, experts told the Global Times.
The newly launched bureau under the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) will strengthen policy coordination in relevant areas, and ensure that relevant measures are implemented as early as possible and achieve tangible results, Cong Liang, deputy head of the NDRC, told a press conference on Monday.
Its major responsibilities include tracking, studying and analyzing the development of the private economy, coordinating and organizing the formulation of policies and measures to promote its development, and formulating policies to promote the growth of private investment, according to the NDRC.
A regular communication mechanism with private firms will also be duties of the new bureau for private economy development, so as to listen to their major problems and figure out solutions.
Following the announcement, China’s stock market rallied. The benchmark Shanghai index rose 1.4 percent at Monday’s closing, while the tech-heavy ChiNext index climbed 0.85 percent. All the 217 publicly listed shares on the Beijing Stock Exchange (BSE), a major board to drive funding for small and medium-sized enterprises, increased during the morning session on Monday.
“The move of setting up a specialized agency to tackle issues and promote relevant work in the private sector is necessary, and has been long anticipated by the market,” Pan Helin, joint director of the Research Center for Digital Economics and Financial Innovation affiliated with Zhejiang University’s International Business School, told the Global Times on Monday.
Just like the national data bureau that the country set up in March to advance the development of data-related fundamental institutions and push forward the planning and building of a digital China, the new private economy development bureau is established to respond to major policy deployment in a timely manner.
“Previously, most policies were promoted by several departments in a synergized way with one major department taking the leading role. But this mode has often met with obstacles because those departments, at the same level, advanced their work in an inconsistent pace, thus affecting the implementation of relevant policies,” Pan said.
Cong of the NDRC said that promoting the development and growth of the private economy is a systematic project that involves a wide scope, a long policy chain, and various work nodes.
“Now, the problem of inconsistency can be well fixed with the launch of the new bureau, the efficiency of which underscores that Chinese authorities have been attaching vital importance on the private sector,” Pan noted.
In the upcoming phase, the private economy development bureau will effectively perform its duties, improve the government-enterprise communication mechanism, strengthen the systematic design of policy promulgation, the tracking and effectiveness of policy implementation, and promote all major plans of the central leadership, Zhang Shixin, an official within the state planner, told the Monday press conference.
