Refined business climate serves corporate needs

Zhanjiang, a coastal city in South China's Guangdong province, recently collected public opinions on a draft regulation about improving its business environment, which will be put into effect soon.

Local officials said the initiative aims to strengthen the rule of law for market management in Zhanjiang and create open and transparent rules, fair and just supervision systems, and convenient and efficient services to better protect the rights and interests of various market entities.

The city government designated 2021 the "Year of Business Environment Improvement". It has carried out eight rectification campaigns which involve 70 items across 18 categories.

The moves are intended to help Zhanjiang hasten the construction of a market-oriented and international business highland, and boost high-quality development in the city, according to the government.

Earlier this year, the city took a series of measures to deepen the reform of its commercial affairs registration system, an important part of optimizing its business environment.

It has further lowered the threshold for market access; simplified procedures; innovated services; improved administrative efficiency; streamlined the approval for enterprise-related business certificates and licenses; completed supervision systems; and enhanced coordination and collaboration among government departments.

According to the reform, applications for opening businesses will be finished within half a workday by the end of this year. The city will also promote one-stop services for entrepreneurs to register new startups and provide them with free engraving of official seals and invoice stamps.

Effective measures to optimize the business environment have fueled a surge in the number of new market entities in Zhanjiang.

Statistics from the city's market regulation administration show the number of newly registered market entities reached 12,737 during the first quarter of this year, an increase of 37 percent year-on-year.

They included 3,398 companies and 9,247 individually owned businesses, up 66 percent and 29 percent year-on-year respectively.

Zhanjiang Economic and Technological Development Zone is an important base for the city to develop port-based industries. It is home to several large-scale projects.

This year, the zone has learned from the Guangzhou Development District and the Nansha pilot free trade zone to speed up administrative approval procedures and shorten the time it takes for enterprises to settle business registrations and other related issues.

For example, the time to examine and verify types of project bidding has been slashed from 30 working days to just one day.

At the beginning of this year, Guangdong Shuanglin Bio-Pharmacy in the zone planned to build new production lines. The applications for this involved multiple departments and needed many materials.

"Officials of the zone listed all the application materials we needed and personally took our staff to the departments to go through procedures," said Qian Feng, director of the company's administrative center. "We finished the application in just one day, which greatly facilitated the efficient operation of our company."

"The business environment here can be completely comparable to that of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen－four major first-tier cities in China," Qian added.

As of May 10, the zone was home to 24,461 market entities, up 26 percent year-on-year. Their collective registered capital increased by 14 percent year-on-year. It has also issued a total of 6,037 electronic business licenses, the highest in Zhanjiang.

Businesspeople take advantage of one-stop services at Zhanjiang's administration for market regulation. LIU JICHENG/FOR CHINA DAILY