The State Council has unveiled new measures that it hopes will dramatically reduce the length of time it takes to start a new business in China.
The State Council released the “Opinions Concerning Further Shrinking Enterprise Establishment Times” (关于进一步压缩企业开办时间的意见) on 17 May, with the goal of streamlining business registration and establishment procedures.
The Opinions “focus upon the problems of low efficiency, multiple steps and lengthy time periods that companies and the general public urgently hope to see resolved,” as well as “unify work standards and requirements, lawfully advance work for contracting enterprise establishment time…[and] further reduce systems transaction costs, in order to stimulate the entrepreneurship and innovative vigour of the masses.”
The chief means by which the Opinions hope to contract enterprise establishment times is to further simplify and reduce the number of administrative steps that need to be handled from the founding of companies to the start of actual business.
The Opinions promote the concept of “one window processing and parallel handling,” which means that applicants will only need to make a single submission of materials to authorities in future,, as opposed to submitting materials to multiple departments in succession as has traditionally been the case.
Enterprise registration procedures will be simplified and made more user friendly, with the goal of reducing the enterprise establishment and registration period to 5 working days.
The Opinions also seek to reduce the amount of time needed to obtain an official seal and perform insurance registration procedures.
The State Council hopes that the measures outlined by the new Opinions can reduce the amount of time it takes to launch a new business in China by over half before the end of 2018, targeting a reduction from 20 working days at present to 8.5 days by next year.
