Investments in SOEs to spur creativity, development

Based on the experiences in the fast five years regarding the reform of State-owned enterprises and assets in Shanghai, the local authorities will work to stimulate the enterprises' creativity and development potential.

As the municipal government of Shanghai has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC) in late August, signing a total of 20 cooperation projects valuing 220 billion yuan ($33 billion), the local SOEs in Shanghai are motivated and thus coming up with an 800-billion-yuan annual investment plan over the next five years, said Jin Xingming, director of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of Shanghai at a government press conference on Thursday.

For the 800-billion-yuan investment, one of the most important investment areas will be strategic emerging industries. Apart from this, the investment will also be allocated to the advanced manufacturing industry, modern service industry, infrastructure and utilities. The municipal government is studying the plan for making these investments, said Jin.

SOEs in Shanghai have grown to be the most vibrant and promising part of the city's economy over the past five years. Up till now, about two thirds of SOEs have completed an overall listing or seen their core assets go public.

During the first 10 months of this year, local SOEs in Shanghai registered sales revenues of 2.55 trillion yuan, up 9.9 percent year-on-year. Their net profit was 253.1 billion yuan, up 4.7 percent from a year earlier. By the end of October, their assets reached nearly 17.9 trillion yuan, up 7.2 percent year-on-year.

Ever since 2014, 16 SOEs in Shanghai have gone public in both domestic and overseas markets. A total of 338 such companies have realized employee stock ownership. The enterprises with mixed ownership have contributed over 93 percent of the total net profits realized by the SOEs directly supervised by SASAC.