Further measures set to be rolled out in second half
China's top economic planning agency said it will consolidate reform measures in the second half of this year, while stating that economic structural reforms have achieved important results, effectively boosting the vitality of market participants in the first half of 2017.
Economic reforms centered around deepening supply-side structural reform have made further progress so far this year, allowing the economy to develop in a stable and sound fashion and ensuring social harmony, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said in a statement posted on its website on Tuesday.
The statement came after an official with the National Bureau of Statistics, speaking at a State Council Information Office press conference on Monday, said the Chinese economy will maintain a stabilizing trend in the second half of the year despite a cooling trend in the property market.
With market-oriented measures, the steel, iron, and coal industries continued to phase out obsolete production capacity in the first half, as the nation's industrial utilization rate improved to 76.4 percent, up 3.4 percentage points from the same period last year, the NDRC said.
Sales of residential housing floor space increased 16.1 percent year-on-year in the first six months, reducing unsold floor space by 9.6 percent, read the statement.
The debt-to-asset ratios of medium and large-sized industrial companies edged down by 0.7 percentage points as of the end of May and cost-cutting measures initiated by the government are expected to reduce taxes and fees for companies by over 1 trillion yuan ($149.7 billion), according to the NDRC.
The central government has also canceled 39 administrative approval items so far this year, and reform of State-owned enterprises (SOEs) and State assets continued to gain pace, the NDRC said.
In the first five months, a total of 3,014 legal entities under centrally administered SOEs were cut, while reforms in the power sector and the fledgling market-oriented trading scheme helped power consumers save about 23 billion yuan.
The government has also gradually implemented a total of 20 measures aimed at attracting foreign investment, and a new version of the foreign investment guidance catalogue, as well as a negative list for foreign investors in the 11 pilot free trade zones, have been issued.
The NDRC will continue to roll out new reform measures that uplift the economy and will oversee the full implementation of existing policies, with a focus on streamlining administration and delegating more powers to lower-level government bodies, SOE reforms, key industries, the fiscal and taxation sectors, opening-up and ecology, it said.
