Fourth Round of Mixed Ownership Reforms to Encompass 160 State-owned Enterprises, 2.5T Yuan in Assets

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The fourth round of mixed-ownership reforms of China’s state-owned enterprises (SOE) are set to involve at least 160 enterprises and more than 2.5 trillion yuan in assets, following approval by the State Council’s SOE Reform Leadership Team (国务院国有企业改革领导小组).

Meng Wei (孟玮), spokesperson for the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said at a recent press conference that the fourth round of trial enterprises would involves 107 central SOE’s and 53 local SOE’s.

The reforms would also involve around 1.7 trillion yuan in central SOE assets and approximately 800 billion yuan in local SOE assets, for total assets of over 2.5 trillion yuan.

99 companies involved in the fourth round of mixed-ownership reforms have assets of over 1 billion yuan, accounting for 61.8% of all companies involved in the trials.

Meng said that China’s fourth round of mixed-ownership trials mark an expansion in enterprise numbers and economic sectors on the basis of the preceding three rounds.

According to Meng the fourth round of SOE reforms will not be confined to the seven key sectors of power, oil, natural gas, rail, civil aviation, telecommunications and military industry, and would also include other sectors with “stronger demonstration significance.”

Local governments have also flagged an acceleration of mixed-ownership reforms, with Shanxi province recently issuing the “2019 State Assets State Enterprise Reform Action Plan” indicating that reforms would expand from subsidiary companies to first-tier groups, and from non-coal enterprises to coal enterprises.

Inner Mongolia’s State Assets Commission has also indicated that it will not set entry thresholds or restrictions on share percentages in order to attract more capital from the private sector to participate in mixed-ownership reforms.

Inner Mongolia has outlined over 40 mixed-ownership projects involving 8 regional companies, encompassing sectors including metallurgy, energy, finance, culture, transportation and investment, which are expected to attract around 20 billion yuan in funds.