State Council pledges to streamline fines, enhance business climate

The State Council, China's Cabinet, said on Friday that the country will remove or adjust 33 types of fines related to administrative regulations and departmental rules amid efforts to foster a more enabling business climate and slash operational costs for market entities.

According to an executive meeting of the State Council chaired by Premier Li Qiang, sustained efforts will be made to strictly regulate fines and explicitly define their criteria.

Attendees at the meeting agreed that fines that are in breach of statutory authority, fall short of economic and social development or have other regulatory or legal alternatives, should be repealed if feasible.

All related departments should enforce rigorous adherence to their discretionary power over administrative penalties and scale up rectification of arbitrary and unwarranted fines, it was stated at the meeting.

Meanwhile, a coordinated administration and joint punishment mechanism will be put in place. Misconduct related to misapplication of fines will be seriously dealt with, and violations will be disclosed to the public.

Such aforementioned actions will ensure that arbitrary fines will not weaken or offset the benefits of various favorable policies rolled out for many enterprises across sectors.

The meeting also called for dedicated efforts to enhance compliance oversight, explore better supervisory approaches, standardize supervision procedures and shore up the effectiveness of supervision.

More stringent supervision work is needed in such key areas as production safety, life and health as well as product quality in order to provide a strong foundation for high-quality development.

The decisions made at the Friday meeting are part of the country's ongoing efforts to address arbitrary fines.

In August, Premier Li signed a State Council decree unveiling a set of revised administrative regulations to further cancel and adjust unreasonable fines, promote the transformation of government functions and improve the law-based business environment.

Administrative regulations related to road transport and international maritime shipping, for example, were revised, and fines for certain violations conducted by road transport operators have been abolished or reduced to lower costs for companies and individuals and stimulate the vitality of market players.

wangkeju@chinadaily.com.cn