Non-public sector set for boost

Beijing will carry out a series of measures in fields including financing, tax reduction and increasing project opportunities to support the development of private companies, the city's mayor Chen Jining said on Monday.

Echoing President Xi Jinping's speech on Nov 1 supporting the private economy in China, Beijing municipal government will provide full services for private companies in their land use, housing facilities and talent introduction, Chen said.

"To ease the financing difficulties of private companies, the city will enlarge its financing assurance fund to 10 billion yuan ($1.44 billion) and establish a finance service platform for small and micro businesses," he said.

In 2018, Beijing is expected to cut taxes by around 40 billion yuan and the figure will be even greater in the next year, according to Chen.

Beijing has many national-level key projects under construction, such as Beijing Daxing International Airport, and facilities for the 2022 Winter Olympics and the 2019 International Horticultural Expo.

In addition to those key projects, Beijing will open more than 60 projects covering infrastructure construction, environmental protection, medical care and tourism, with a total investment of more than 100 billion yuan, in which private capital will participate.

"We will take down all the 'invisible' thresholds and encourage private companies to participate in or own those projects," Chen said.

In fact, Beijing has been making efforts to improve its business climate for both domestic and foreign companies in the past year.

The city has cut the time required for the procedure to set up a company in Beijing from seven to two days, and the approval period was reduced from 24 to five days.

Since many private companies in Beijing are in the science and high-tech sectors, the city established a scientific and technological innovation fund of 30 billion yuan last year. In the future, it will be expanded to more than 100 billion yuan.

This money will be invested in the early stage of innovation projects, helping private companies to maintain their research at a mature level.

By the end of 2017, Beijing had 1.3 million private companies, accounting for more than 90 percent of all the companies in the city. They provide more than 60 percent of employment in the capital.

Particularly, more than 80 percent of the private companies in Beijing are in the service sector, mainly in science and technological innovation. From January to September this year, up to more than 50,000 new science and technology companies were founded.