Ministry of Commerce Takes Five Measures to Implement Document No.19

The General Office of China’s State Council issued Opinions on Supporting Stable Growth of Foreign Trade on May 4. The Ministry of Commerce has paid great importance to the document and made efforts to do well with its implementation. On the basis of wide and deep research, and combining its own functions, the Ministry of Commerce has put forward five trade facilitation measures to lighten the burdens on enterprises.
1. To Further reduce categories of goods under automatic import license. On June 10, the Ministry of Commerce and General Administration of Customs jointly announced that since July 1, automatic import license management of 81 kinds of goods with commodity codes in five main categories like CD production equipment, automotive products, engineering machinery, textile machinery and metal working machine was canceled, with the range of cancellation reaching 14%. In 2013, 6,781 automatic import licenses were granted to the goods above, with import reaching US$ 2.98 billion and involving 2.253 enterprises.
2. To delegate the power of delayed approval on Import Tariff Quota Management concerning farm products processing trade for the second time or more. On June 23, the Ministry of Commerce released a notice, deciding to transfer the power of delayed approval on Import Tariff Quota Management concerning farm products (grain, sugar, cotton and wool top) processing trade for the second time or more to provincial or prefecture-level commercial departments. In 2013, about 50 such cases were dealt with by the Ministry of Commerce. After the delegation of power, the time needed by the approval was shorten to within three workdays from 10 workdays.
3. To abolish the charging item of Certificate of Origin of Textile. On June 19, the General Office of the Ministry of Commerce released a notice, deciding to abolish the charging for Certificate of Origin of Textile. This charging was the last for licenses in the Ministry of Commerce, involving China’s export of textile to Turkey, with about 1000 certificates issued every year. So far, charging items for certificates of the Ministry of Commerce were all abolished.
4. To adjust the charge of value-added services for networked enterprises of processing trade. On June 26, the China International Electronic Commerce Center under the Ministry of Commerce noticed its local representative offices to comprehensively promote service quality, and further reduce service charges since July 1, reducing its value-added service charges for the 25,000 processing trade enterprises networked, with the lowest reduce of 8%, highest 75%, and average 30%. Meanwhile, they were asked to positively advocate the gradient transfer of processing trade to western China, and provide free value-added services for enterprises in Tibet, Gansu, Qinghai and Ningxia. After this adjustment, value-added service charges of member enterprises will decrease about 40 million yuan annually.
5. To adjust booth fee for the export exhibition of the 116th Canton Fair. To relieve the burden of foreign trade enterprises and conquer the difficulties together with them, the export exhibition of the 116th Canton Fair will reduce its booth fee, with 2,000 yuan reduced for District C, and 1,000 yuan reduced for District A and B. It is estimated that a total of more than 70 million yuan will be reduced.
 July 17, 2014 - 08:52 BJT (00:52 GMT)   MOFCOM