Multi-billion yuan fund established to back reform of SOEs

A 60 billion yuan fund led by China Reform Holdings Corporation to support reform of State-owned enterprises was established on Tuesday, Economic Information Daily reported.

Investors to the first 30 billion yuan fund include some centrally-administered SOEs, locally-administered SOEs, domestic financial institutions and private enterprises, and will invest to centrally and locally-administered SOEs in a list that are carrying out comprehensive reform campaign.

The major investment areas including strategic emerging industries, non-listed enterprises equity to diversify, mixed-ownership reform and listed enterprises to merge, acquire and reorganize.

Last year, the State Council announced a plan to choose a number of centrally and locally-administered SOEs with a wider range of business categories to enrich the ongoing comprehensive reform. Currently, 444 enterprises have been included in the list.

China has been pushing the reform to diversify the ownership structure of SOEs in an effort to encourage operating efficiency and improve services of SOEs.

According to the Ministry of Finance, the combined profits of SOEs rose 15.6 percent year-on-year to 819.77 billion yuan in the first quarter of 2019 with the revenue reaching 14 trillion yuan, an 8.9 percent rise from a year earlier.

Central SOEs reported a year-on-year growth of 13.1 percent to 426.5 billion yuan in combined profits in the first quarter of 2019, according to the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.