China orders local governments to settle company bills by end of year
Top planning official says repaying debts is ‘moral bottom line’ and biggest step for improving China’s business environment
All arrears below 500,000 yuan (US$70,870) must be cleared by the end of the year, said Xiao Weiming, deputy secretary general of the National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s top economic planner.
The event on Saturday was hosted by the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges (CCIEE), a Beijing-based governmental think tank.
Local governments must repay what they owe, which Xiao described as “the most basic moral bottom line”, according to Jiefang Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party’s Shanghai branch.
Han Wenxiu, executive deputy director of the party’s economic affairs office, also emphasised at the conference the need to prevent the practice of clearing old arrears only to accumulate new ones.