Beijing continues to optimize business environment

The Beijing city government has been working to optimize the local business environment in an effort to resolve the major issues reported by companies working in the city.

In order to create a better business environment for enterprises in Beijing, in 2017 the municipal government started rolling out a series of administrative reforms.

New policies were introduced governing the approval of construction projects, the registration of start-ups, tax payments, access to the power grid, cross-border trade, and financial credit.

For start-ups, Beijing has cut the time needed to register a new business from 24 days down to 8 days. The time it takes to get an electricity connection has fallen from 141 days to 34 days. And small and micro businesses don't have to pay a service fee to access the power grid.

Hall of Beijing Government Service Center, March 26th, 2019 [Photo: China Plus]

Dai Ying from the Beijing Development and Reform Office says that the reforms have changed how people do business in the city in three ways.

"The service delivery approach has changed from being oriented towards the government's needs to being oriented towards the needs of the enterprises. Companies now need to go to government offices less often, maybe even just once, instead of going several times to different departments. And government departments now coordinate with each other to service the needs of enterprises, instead of working on their own."

Companies can now spend less time sending employees to different offices chasing approvals.

The government set up an online platform that coordinates the approval process across multiple departments. Yan Xiaohu is the head of this program.

"Before the reform, getting approvals was a step-by-step process. You had to go to each department in turn, and you couldn't skip any of the steps. Now things are different. You apply for approvals online, and each department can see your application and review your application at the same time."

Yan says the new process has cut the time it takes for a company to get all of their approvals to just 7 working days, down from a month or more.

This is Mr. Hong. He runs a company that manufactures medical equipment. He's at the Beijing Government Service Center submitting an application to advertise his products.

"Now we just queue and submit our materials at one service window, and we don't need to go all over Beijing like we did before."

The Beijing government has also taken steps to help facilitate cross-border trade, such as simplifying approval processes for the Beijing-Tianjin port.

The time it takes to process import documents has been reduced to 24 hours, down from 80 hours. And the time it takes to get export documents processed is just one-third of what it was before the reforms.