China is considering providing more tax benefits for foreign companies to encourage them to reinvest in the country and start new projects, according to the State Council Information Office.

State Taxation Administration’s deputy head Run Rongfa and chief auditor Wang Daoshu attended a Beijing press briefing organized by the State Council Information Office on Tuesday to talk about China’s plan to attract foreign investments with tax cuts.

The State Council Information Office said the central government had launched a series of tax benefits to help private companies resume production and operations since the Covid-19 outbreak. It said the central government would ensure that both local and foreign companies enjoy the same tax benefits.

In the next stage, the central government will further review its taxation policies to encourage foreign companies to reinvest in the country. It will also expand the scope of the Catalogue of Industries for Guiding Foreign Investment to cover more new businesses and simplify tax payment procedures for foreign companies.

On March 19, the Ministry of Commerce and the National Development and Reform Commission jointly launched a public consultation about how to amend the Catalogue of Industries for Guiding Foreign Investment.

Renminbi financing assets

The Shanghai branch of the People’s Bank of China on Tuesday held a ceremony in Lingang in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone to kick off a pilot scheme related to cross-border transactions of domestic trade financing assets. The scheme is expected to help local banks further revitalize their resources, optimize their asset-liability structure and improve their management efficiency.

It will promote the cross-border renminbi flow, provide overseas institutions with more high-quality financial assets and promote the renminbi as a global investment currency.

E-commerce

Taobao’s live broadcast gross merchandise volume (GMV) in 2019 exceeded 200 billion yuan ($28.57 billion) with 400 million users accumulatively, Xuan De, general manager of Taobao’s content e-commerce division, said in a speech at an online event organized by Alibaba on Monday.

A total of 177 live broadcast anchors recorded revenue of more than 100 million yuan each with a total of 40 million products being displayed on their programs. In 2020, Taobao aims to help 100,000 anchors make more than 10,000 yuan a month and 100 companies achieve annual sales of 100 million yuan.

Company news

Total net profit of the six major Chinese banks in 2019 grew 5.23% to 1.12 trillion yuan from 2018. Total revenue of these banks reached 3.25 trillion yuan, up 7.96% annually.

Among them, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China’s operating income increased 10.52% to 855.164 billion yuan (about $122.17 billion), the highest among the six banks. Postal Savings Bank of China was the most profitable bank among its peers with its net profit up 16.48% to 60.93 billion yuan.

Huatai Securities said its net profit surged 78.86% to 9 billion yuan for the year ended December 31, 2019, from a year earlier. Revenue increased 54.35% to 24.86 billion yuan.

The company planned to buy back 45.38 million to 90.77 million shares at 28.81 yuan each from the markets for the use in its employee incentive scheme.

Opinions

China’s Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) rebounded to 52 in March from 35.7 in February, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The latest PMI showed that the production and operations of enterprises have significantly improved in March, said Zhao Qinghe, a statistician at NBS. However, as the local and global epidemic situations continue to change, China still faces a rising risk of having more and more imported cases, he said.

Zhao said PMI will remain an important indicator to reflect the recovery pace of China’s industry chain, which may have been affected by the hard-hit global economy.

The story was written by Xu Jiangshan and Wang Xiaohan and first published at ATimesCN.com.