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SOEs cut management expenditures to ease losses

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-07-19 10:22

China's central State-owned enterprises(SOEs) are scheduled to take a raft of measures to reduce management expenditures, amid this year's heavy losses from natural disasters, said a senior official of the industry watchdog on Friday.

However, no details of the expenditure-cut program are available at present.

Li Rongrong, chairman of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), said at a working conference that this move was to ease hefty losses incurred from this winter's snow havoc and the May 12 deadly quake.

"We should step up efforts and make specific plans to make up for the losses", added Li.

Latest SASAC figures revealed that the quake had caused 41.4 billion yuan ($6.07 billion) in direct economic losses to central SOEs with 3,586 people killed, injured or missing. Some 27 companies suffered direct economic losses of more than 100 million yuan.

He urged that electricity and telecommunication enterprises should also combine reconstruction and technology upgrading together to make the infrastructure more disaster-resistant.

The snow havoc this winter caused a 150 billion yuan-plus direct economic loss to the country.

Earlier in May, China ordered central government departments to cut budgets by 5 percent this year to help the quake relief.

China currently has 150 centrally-administered SOEs directly under the control of the SASAC, with total assets of 14.6 trillion yuan as of November.