China Daily:
Shutdowns at many enterprises and factories in China during the COVID-19 outbreak have affected supply chains nationally, with some enterprises considering moving their businesses overseas. Do you think that foreign-invested companies have been seriously affected? Thank you.
Xi Yanchun:
Vice Minister Wang Jiangping will answer this question.
Wang Jiangping:
Thank you for your question. To be honest, the epidemic will have a certain impact on China's economic operations in a short term. The CPC Central Committee and the State Council attach great importance to coping with the impact of the epidemic and require the overall coordination of epidemic prevention and control with economic and social development. The central authority has issued a series of policies and measures to promote the resumption of work and productive activities of enterprises, and reduce their burdens in such areas as financing, social security, taxes and fees. It proposes to streamline review and approval process, optimize services, and accurately and steadily promote resumption of work and production, while asking the industries and key links that have a major role in the global supply chain to resume production and supply as soon as possible, in order to maintain the stability of the global supply chain. To achieve this, we closely followed up the impact of the epidemic on the operation of the industrial economy. In terms of industrial sectors, labor-intensive industries such as the textile industry, and electronics, auto and some other sectors relying more heavily on the supply chain, will be affected to a greater degree in the short term. From the perspective of regional impact, the effect on funding in severely affected epidemic areas such as Hubei is relatively large. The epidemic not only directly affects the economic activities of Hubei, but also other provinces and even the entire country to varying degrees. It also affects some multinational companies' supply chains.
While mobilizing local authorities to coordinate the epidemic prevention and control program with resumption of work and production of enterprises, we are working hard to promote this process in all the links of the industrial chain, and to solve problems related to the collaborative resumption of work by major enterprises and SMEs. In our work, we not only focus on giving full play to the market's self-healing functions, but also focus on the role of government in policy guarantee and coordination, and providing precise services for the key industries and key industrial chains. To this end, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has sent liaison staff to help promote resumption of work and production to key enterprises in some provinces and cities, helping them to solve cross-regional and cross-sectoral problems and promote the resumption of work and production of the entire industrial chain.
In response to the current difficulties facing SMEs, the executive meeting of the State Council has studied and issued a number of policies and measures last week. Local governments and relevant departments have also successively introduced a series of policies to provide a strong guarantee for the production and operation of the SMEs. At present, except in Hubei province, the operating rates of large industrial provinces and industrial enterprises above designated size have mostly exceeded 90%, and in key industrial provinces such as Zhejiang, Guangdong, Shandong, and Jiangsu, the rates have even exceeded 95%. The work and production resumption rate of SMEs is also steadily increasing, reaching 52%. Taken together, we can see the fundamentals supporting long-term and positive growth of Chinese economy have not changed, and the impact of the epidemic is short-term and generally controllable.
What I want to stress here is that no matter whether it is a domestic or a foreign-funded enterprise, we treat it equally, so that it can enjoy the same policies and services. Thank you for your question.
