Shanghai Hopes for 50,000 New Jobs by Year-endThe Shanghai authorities are urging state firms and local government to create 50,000 new jobs for laid-offs from other ailing state-owned enterprises by the year-end, the Chinadaily reported Monday.The government aims to create new jobs with a two-pronged campaign of raising loans for small businesses and starting a wide range of employment training programs. "We will try to find jobs for 70 percent of the people now in our re-employment centers, mainly through establishing new companies in the service sector," said Huang Qifan, director of the Shanghai Economic Commission. The Shanghai authorities have pledged to help create 100,000 new jobs annually during the next three years for workers laid off in the city's economic restructuring, the paper reported. The plan is on track so far. The city saw 53,600 new job openings in the first six months of the year as private businesses hired additional workers to fuel their expansion, the report added. China has achieved great progress in the fight to rejuvenate ailing state-owned enterprises through financial restructuring and massive lay-offs, according to official media reports. The redundancies have trimmed the fat from ailing state-owned firms but have added to urban unemployment across the country. According to official figures, net profits of state-owned enterprises and those in which the government holds a controlling stake surged 210 percent in the January to June period. Loss-making state enterprises' combined losses dropped 6.1 percent to 46.3 billion yuan, the official media reported. |
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