NDRC lifts requirements for licensing of production, sale of salt

China's top economic planner has revoked administrative rules for the licensing of exclusive rights to produce and sell salt, according to a government notice released Monday.

Salt-related Chinese stocks rallied Monday after the repeal announcement, with Shenzhen-listed Yunnan Salt & Salt Chemical Industry Co taking the lead by rising to its daily highest limit.

But the repeal of the rules is -unlikely to translate into a turnaround in the country's tightly controlled salt sector, industry analysts said.

The annulment of the rules, which went into effect on April 28, 2006, -follow decisions of the State Council to streamline administration and delegate powers to lower levels, the National -Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said in the notice on Monday.

The notice, however, is of little -significance to the salt sector, as production rights licensing has already been delegated to provincial-level salt industry authorities, financial portal money.163.com reported Monday, citing an unidentified industry analyst.

In addition, salt business remains subject to the State edible salt monopoly policy, which was introduced in 1996 to promote iodized salt consumption so as to reduce iodine deficiency, according to the analyst.

The report also quoted an unidentified staff at the China Salt Association as saying that the annulment doesn't mean the country would open up its salt sector to social capital.

The Chinese government had a -monopoly over salt business for a long time, and private salt trading was illegal throughout the Chinese history.

In a sign of China's strict control over salt business, the country's biggest online marketplace Taobao released an announcement in late February 2013 requiring vendors to stop selling salt if they were not licensed by the local salt -industry -authorities to engage in the business.

Although the market is divided over whether the rescission notice would help expedite reforms of the country's salt management regime, there may still be some changes in the wake of the -annulment, for instance, a downward price pressure on salt vendors, Gong Hanlin, an analyst at Shandong-based industry information portal chem99.com, told the Global Times Monday.