Shenzhen has relieved the burdens of local enterprises by more than 100 billion yuan (US$14 billion) by providing subsidies and reducing fees, according to a report by the Shenzhen Economic Daily yesterday.
Among the measures, one is to offer a total of 12.4 billion yuan in subsidies for electricity fees over three years to offset the burden on enterprises and stimulate the development of real economy. A total of 15,000 enterprises will benefit from the subsidy program. Relevant enterprises, including those in wholesale, retail, logistics and other key industries whose production and business scale have reached a certain level, will benefit from the incentives. After the measures are implemented, the cost of using industrial electricity will be lowered by 10 percent on average.
This May, the city unveiled a compensation plan that sets up a 2-billion-yuan fund to mitigate risks to small- and micro- enterprises in getting loans. The fund guarantee will subsequently lead the banks to increase loans of 25 billion yuan, and a total of 4,000 such enterprises will benefit from the program.
The city also unveiled a package of rules this February to improve the business environment by referring to the practices of Singapore and Hong Kong. This July, unified and simplified certificates were issued to business entities and approvals were streamlined.
Since July, the city has unveiled 300 approval items that can be processed online. The items cover many parts of people’s life, from applying for housing and rental subsidies, business registration, travel permits and visa applications, to hukou transfers for college graduates and more.
Regarding the approval of construction projects, the city has promised the approval process, from project application to the initiation of construction, must be completed within 90 days. The approval time period has been reduced by two-thirds.
By the end of October, the number of business entities in the city had reached 3.07 million, an increase of 3.2 percent over the previous year.