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Wen Jiabao Chaired a State Council Executive Meeting to Make Decisions on Policies for Promoting Steady Growth in Foreign Trade

On September 12, Premier Wen Jiabao presided over a State Council executive meeting to deliberate and decided on policies to promote steady growth in foreign trade.

In order to support the development of foreign trade, the meeting adopted Several Opinions on Promoting Steady Growth in Foreign Trade: 1.Speed up the export tax rebate process and ensure it be done accurately and promptly. 2. Expand financing and lower financing cost, and give support to commercial banks to expand trade financing for small and micro-sized firms and increase loans to qualified exporters. 3. Increase export credit and its coverage, especially credit provided to small and micro-sized firms. Offer more short-term credit to small and medium-sized businesses to help them explore overseas markets, and implement in earnest the special arrangement of insurance financing for the export of large-scale complete equipment. 4. Enhance trade facilitation. Streamline approval procedures, improve efficiency in customs clearance, and lower clearance cost. On the premise of effective supervision, the mode of local declaration and port clearance will be applicable for category B enterprises. The statutory inspection and quarantine catalogue will be further reduced. The entry-exit inspection and quarantine fee of all statutory inspection and quarantine objects in the fourth quarter of 2012 will be exempted, and the lowered inspection and quarantine rate will come into force in 2013. 5. Properly address trade frictions, as well as using trade remedy measures to protect home industries. Encourage enterprises to make use of the cooperation mechanism of advantageous region and sub-region and effective FTA agreement. 6. Expand imports of high-tech equipment, key components and daily necessities in order to support the technological reform of enterprises and balance trade. 7. Explore emerging markets in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia, as well as Central and Eastern Europe, and optimize international market layout for foreign trade. 8. Optimize the domestic layout for foreign trade, expand opening up of central and western region, and promote economic and trade cooperation of border regions with neighboring countries. The meeting requires all regions and departments to seriously implement the policies, reinforce monitoring, research and judgement of foreign trade situation, and provide good services for enterprises.

In order to intensify crackdown on infringement and counterfeits and effectively punish crimes, the meeting passed the Opinions on Connection of Administrative Enforcement and Criminal Enforcement in Cracking down on IPR Infringements and the Production and Sales of Counterfeit and Forged Commodities. The Opinions stipulates: 1. Where the administrative law enforcement department finds that the infringement and counterfeits case is suspected of constituting crimes and should be investigated for criminal responsibility during its law enforcement inspection, the administrative enforcement department shall transfer the suspected criminal case as required to the public security organ at the same level. 2. Where the administrative law enforcement department finds that the infringements and counterfeits case is obvious to constitute crimes during its law enforcement inspection or dealing with reports and complaints, the administrative enforcement department shall notify the public security organ in a timely manner in written form, and make a copy for the People's Procuratorate. When the public security organ receive the notification, the public security organ should make investigation immediately, and decide within 10 days of the notification whether to file the case, and should notify the administrative law enforcement organ and make a copy for the People’s Procuratorate. 3. When public security organ finds a case is not needed to be investigated for criminal responsibility but for administrative responsibility, it should transfer the case to administrative law enforcement department at the same level for dealing with. 4. For those suspected criminal cases that are of major importance and complicated, administrative law enforcement department and the public security organ can join efforts to deal with, so as to find out the key criminal and crackdown the illegal production, supply and sales chain. 5. The administrative law enforcement department should report the cases it has investigated to the people’s government at the same level and the administrative law enforcement department at the upper level on a regular basis. If the administrative law enforcement organ does not transfer or does not transfer the cases that should be transferred to the public security organ within the deadline, the people’s government at the same level and the administrative law enforcement department at the upper level should urge it to transfer within a time limit; if the case is serious, the supervision organ should punish the person who are responsible for this; if it is a criminal case, the person in charge will be investigated for criminal responsibility at the judicial authorities. 6. If the public security organ does not deal with the case transferred by the administrative law enforcement department, or does not decide whether to file the case within the statutory deadline, the administrative law enforcement organ can suggest the People's Procuratorate to place it as a case and supervise the enforcement. The Opinions also made specific provisions on perfecting work mechanism, strengthening supervision and assessment and ensuring the implementation of the connection work, and required the administrative law enforcement department to incorporate the infringement and counterfeits cases into government information publication scope to receive public supervision.

For effective control over futures trading, the meeting revised the Regulations for the Administration on Futures Trading. The revised Regulations further defined trade in futures, made it clear that local governments are responsible for dealing with and banning illegal futures trading, and perfected related policies.

The meeting also deliberated on other matters.


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