China's Money-losing SOEs Improve PerformanceFollowing are the facts and figures for the performance of China's money-losing state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the country's ninth five-year plan period (1996-2000), provided by the State Development Planning Commission.The Chinese government set up 160-billion-yuan reserve funds for clearing up non-performing loan and bad debts SOEs bore from 1996 to 1999, helping over 6,800 SOEs rearrange assets and streamline management. The funds will total nearly 50 billion yuan this year. By 1999, 601 SOEs had signed debt-to-equity swap deals to get out of financial difficulties, with 459.6 billion yuan in debts converted into shareholding rights owned by banks. SOEs produced a total profit of 96.7 billion yuan in 1999, up 77.6 percent over 1998, and the profit figure topped 90.3 billion yuan in the first half of this year, 2.06 times more than the same period of last year. Among the 6,599 large and medium-sized money-losing SOEs, 3,626 companies had emerged from financial woes by June this year, with 1,127 of them turning loss into profit. |
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