CCTV:
At the conference of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held on April 8, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that we should take every possible opportunity to create conditions that support the resumption of work and production and seize every opportunity to enable smooth industrial, market, economic and social cycles. Then, what kind of work has the MIIT done to help resume the work and production of the holistic industrial chain?
Huang Libin:
General Secretary Xi Jinping has reiterated that industries should be coordinated in resuming work and production. The State Council's executive meetings on March 10 and 24 also focused on the resumption of work and production. Following the decisions and deployments made by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, we promoted the industries' resumption of work and production under principles that included big enterprises taking a leading role in helping smaller ones, the coordination between upstream and downstream industries, and the cooperation between domestic and foreign trade firms. Our efforts can be elaborated in four aspects, as follows:
First, leadership is strengthened to cover all the horizontal and vertical industrial layouts. Led by Minister Miao Wei, a steering group consisting of 18 department directors has been established to focus on the resumption. Meanwhile, we have cooperated with 15 other ministries and commissions, including the National Development and Reform Commission, as a designated team to foster cross-departmental and cross-regional coordination. We have also sent teams to seven provinces, including Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong, Zhejiang, Fujian, Sichuan and Hunan to ensure that the resumption proceeds in an orderly fashion. Officials at provincial, autonomous regional and municipal levels have been sent to enterprises to help with their operation and assist employees to return to position, addressing the problems related to the labor force, logistics, funds, raw materials and parts supply.
Second, the leading enterprises take a leading role in the resumption, and the smaller ones follow suit. At the very beginning, we made a list of 51 leading conglomerates and more than 7,300 core supporting enterprises to address the blockages, difficulties and underlying problems encountered during the resumption of work and production. Local governments, departments and industrial guilds were also called on to provide targeted services. On such a basis, we then sorted out 41 other leading enterprises and 379 more core supporting partners and helped them to coordinate precisely with the resumption. The production of those enterprises has now been much restored when compared to the same period last year. The 92 leading enterprises combined have led more than 400,000 small and medium-sized companies from both upstream and downstream industries in making solid achievements during the resumption of work and production.
Third, we have made great efforts to aid, help and benefit enterprises by offering targeted services to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for their return to work and production. SMEs, with a large number of establishments covering a wide range of sectors, are an indispensable part of the manufacturing industry chain. The Ministry has given full play to the coordinating mechanism of the Leading Group Office for Promoting the Development of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises under the State Council, and has promoted the promulgation and implementation of a series of fiscal, tax and financial policies to support the production resumption of SMEs and to help them withstand difficulties. Through an online platform, online training and other ways, we have provided support for more than 200,000 SMEs and allowed them to enjoy these preferential policies. We have organized local governments to provide targeted docking services for SMEs in resuming their work and production through the opening of platforms that allow enterprises to connect supply and demand, as well as the launching of cloud services and resource matching meetings. We have also stepped up efforts to clean up the arrears that government departments and large state-owned enterprises owe to private enterprises and SMEs in order to prevent new arrears caused by the pandemic. In the first three months of this year, we have cleared up 28.8 billion yuan in arrears to private enterprises and SMEs.
Fourth, we have implemented policies and measures to help the manufacturing sector resume production, increase efficiency and achieve full capacity. In order to promote automobile consumption, an executive meeting of the State Council recently announced a two-year extension of the new energy vehicle purchase subsidy and purchase tax exemption policies, which were set to expire at the end of this year. The Ministry is working with relevant departments on detailed implementation plans. In light of the problem of poor offline sales in textiles and clothing, light industrial products, toys, furniture and other industries, we, along with several industry associations and e-commerce platforms, have held special online sales activities to promote consumption. To boost new drivers of the new economy, we have accelerated the construction of infrastructure, such as 5G networks, the Internet of Things, big data, artificial intelligence and smart cities, so as to promote the coordinated development of related industries in the upstream and downstream sectors. Thank you.
