To support the stable growth of foreign trade, the General Office of the State Council issued Opinions on Supporting Stable Growth of Foreign Trade (hereinafter referred to as Opinions) recently, to motivate market vitality, bolster confidence of foreign trade enterprises and promote the stable growth of import and export.

The Opinions stressed that foreign trade development is not only conducive to stable economic growth and ensuring employment, but also in favor of the integration of China’s economy and the world economy. At present, China’s foreign trade faces a complicated and severe situation. The realization of this year’s target requires arduous efforts, both current and long-term considerations, and powerful and effective measures to support the stable growth of foreign trade.

The Opinions put forward policies and measures in four aspects. First, optimizing foreign trade structure -- to encourage imports of advanced technology and equipment and key components, and reasonably raise imports of general consumer goods which are closely related to people’s livelihood; to maintain stable growth of goods trade, strengthen general trade, improve processing trade and develop other trade forms; to support service trade and expand the import and export of services; to display the role of trade in promoting “going global”.

Second, further improving trade environment -- to improve trade facilitation, further reduce varieties of goods that need export inspection, optimize supervision methods and comprehensively introduce “declare once, inspect once and clear once”; to rectify and standardize business services and charges in import and export and reduce business burden; to standardize import and export order and firmly combat cutthroat competitions and trade frictions.

Third, strengthening policy guarantee -- to further optimize the formation mechanism of marketization of RMB exchange rate, and promote RMB settlement in transnational trade; to improve financing service and broaden financing channels for import and export enterprises; to strengthen export credit insurance, expand the scale and coverage of export credit insurance, and increase support to small and micro enterprises; to encourage insurance companies to expand short-term export credit insurance and further increase operation entities of short-term export credit insurance; to accelerate tax reimbursement for export and guarantee a timely and full refund; to expand pilots of export rebates of financial leasing goods; to adopt comprehensive measures and support Chinese equipment to go out.

Fourth, strengthening the competitiveness of foreign trade enterprises -- to support the development of foreign trade enterprises including private and medium and small sized enterprises, and help them with restructuring, merging, reorganization, and quality improvement; to accelerate the establishment of foreign trade production bases, trade platforms and international marketing networks; to promulgate trade facilitation measures for transnational e-commerce trade; to support the development of foreign trade enterprises of comprehensive services and provide professional services for the export of small and micro enterprises; to expand pilots for market procurement.

The Opinions stressed that local governments and departments are required to enhance their understanding of foreign trade situation, bolster the vitality of market entities, and raise confidence of foreign trade enterprises; to pay high attention to foreign trade, considering the overall situation and taking active actions; to deepen reform, expand opening up, further transform functions, streamline administration, and strengthen service awareness so as to improve service to foreign trade enterprises, especially those small and micro ones. Local governments at different levels should issue targeted supporting measures to raise force of policies. Related departments should formulate work plans, define time limits and strengthen supervision, so as to ensure the implementation of policies and measures.

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