Policies must focus on nurturing innovation, say experts

More efforts are needed to improve the effectiveness of the support policies for enterprises, so as to strengthen their resilience for long-term, sustainable growth, legislators and political advisers said on Monday.

"Supporting policies for companies should not only focus on helping them to overcome the current difficulties, but also on boosting their resilience and innovative capabilities," said Jiang Ying, a member of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

"With the government carrying out more effective communication, assessment and adjustment while making policies, companies are able to recover and go on to provide impetus for the country's long-term economic prosperity," said Jiang, who is also vice-chair of the China unit of London-headquartered Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd, a global auditing and consulting firm.

In face of the COVID-19 pandemic, many micro, small and medium-sized companies are facing difficulties, cash flow pressures and supply chain constraints, she said.

Jiang said that the government should set up a fund to offer direct support for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises with cash flow problems amid the outbreak.

"Moreover, China should also speed up support for the digital transformation of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. More incentives should be launched to encourage innovation in digital technology," she said.

To tackle the difficulties, Kang Tao, a deputy to the 13th National People's Congress and Party secretary of Quanzhou, Fujian province, said the city has explored and launched a string of new measures to help companies with work resumptions and supply chains.

"Since local companies are facing a drop in orders from both home and abroad due to the pandemic, government officials are encouraging them to use livestreaming broadcasts to help selling products," Kang said.

Kang described such innovative measures as "moving the whole city into the livestreaming room" and said that the city aims to hit a sales revenue of over 100 billion yuan ($14 billion) through livestreaming this year.

"We have also teamed up with tech giant Alibaba Group and helped over 200 firms to expand domestic and foreign markets through online channels," he said.

According to the enterprises, orders from the domestic market have recovered by more than 80 percent on average while overseas orders jumped by 40 percent.

"Danger and opportunity always coexist. Quanzhou has seized opportunities from the difficulties and aims to promote higher-level of high-quality development," he said.

Since the beginning of this year, more than 164 projects were signed online in Quanzhou, which hit 166.9 billion yuan in investment amount in total.