Zhejiang’s private sector benefits from new measures

Raft of policies introduced to help realize high-quality development

East China’s Zhejiang province has started to witness the initial fruits of 31 measures drafted by the provincial authorities to boost the private sector in a bid to realize high-quality development.

The private sector has always been the hallmark of Zhejiang’s economy. Around one-tenth of its population are private business owners and one out of every 29 people own a private enterprise.

The measures, which were announced in December, included a financing guarantee corporation to support the funding of small and micro-sized enterprises to bolster their liquidity. The province also established a financing fund to ensure the sound and steady development of listed private enterprises in the province.

Commercial banks in Zhejiang, for instance, have taken innovative measures to help private companies with good prospects get through hard times by exploring an interbank consultation mechanism under the guidance of local banking and insurance regulators.

“Take us for example, we have benefitted a lot thanks to the high-efficient tax exemptions at both the national and provincial level,” Tu Hongyan, chairwoman of Wensli Group, a leading Chinese silk brand, told China Daily.

The Hangzhou-based silk and textile product maker, which pumps an annual 30 million yuan ($4.3 million) into technological R&D and design innovation, recently purchased high-efficiency smart facilities to enable it to launch a series of new designs such as augmented reality silk scarves and smart silk-covered notebooks, which are getting a warm reception.

“The government has always supported the construction of innovation platforms of private enterprises, and these supportive measures greatly eased the economic burden of Wensli,” Tu said.

In Wenzhou, where private enterprises accounted for 99 percent of the city’s total, the government was called to provide a more efficient and sound business environment since the latter half of last year.

“It is the highly efficient administrative feedback and quality services in Wenzhou that prompted us to move our headquarters from Zhuhai in Guangdong to the high-tech zone of Wenzhou in the latter half of 2018,” said Xia Yanming, president of AM Systems Group, a leading enterprise resource planning software developer and supplier.

“All these measures are designed to solve private enterprises’ real-time difficulties, and help them break through their growth bottleneck for healthier development,” said Wen Jianrong, vice-director of the province’s reform and development commission.

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Statistics from Zhejiang provincial bureau of statistics showed that in the first quarter, the province registered a year-on-year rise of 13.6 percent in the revenue of its digital economy’s core industrial added value, with 17 traditional sectors such as textile, garments and chemistry registering a year-on-year rise of 9.1 percent.