Listed firms under fire over reception costs

BEIJING - The exorbitant spending on receptions by some Chinese listed companies has came under fierce criticism from netizens in the midst of the country's campaign against extravagance.

The Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges required all listed companies to release annual reports for 2012 by the end of April.

These reports showed that the reception costs of nine companies exceeded 100 million yuan ($16.1 million), according to statistics from Panorama Network Co Ltd, a financial information provider.

The top 10 companies in terms of reception costs, including mostly State-owned enterprises (SOEs), spent a total of 2.9 billion yuan on receptions last year.

China Railway Construction Corporation Limited topped the list with a total spend of 837 million yuan, equivalent to about 10 percent of the company's profit last year.

The figures came under fire in cyberspace, as a frugality campaign has been ongoing across the country since December.

Hundreds of Chinese websites have so far run reports on the companies' reception costs.

On Sina's Weibo, China's most popular microblogging service, more than 170 postings focused on this topic after the news came out Monday morning, gaining thousands of reposts and comments in the same day.

A comment by someone with the screen name "Gengtian 40 Nian" postulated that the excessive reception expenditure allows room for corruption, saying "the reception fee would be better called a corruption fee."