China facilitates domestic commerce, logistics development

The State Council, China's cabinet, on Sunday released guidelines to promote the development of domestic commerce and logistics sectors in an effort to speed up job creation and consumption.
Loans from commercial banks and other policy support will be given to relevant enterprises to build some of them into globally competitive retailers, wholesaler and logistics companies, noted the guidelines.
Efforts will be made by the authorities to improve business environment for these companies including reducing administrative approval procedures and tax burdens for them, it said.
From January to September, consumption contributed to 48.5 percent of China's economic growth, outdoing investment, which accounted for 41.5 percent. However, some bottlenecks need to be unblocked to boost consumption in the world's second largest economy.
It is very urgent to establish a highly efficient logistics and distribution system to meet the needs of the e-commerce and information era, Chinese Vice Minister of Commerce Fang Aiqing said at a recent industry meeting.
The authorities will publish a blacklist of companies that fail to keep their promises in a bid to establish a credit evaluation mechanism, noted the document.
The State Council urges local governments at various levels to implement these measures in an earnest manner.