China Increasing Reforms At Money-Losing State-owned Enterprises

SHENYANG, August 19 (Xinhua) -- Liaoning Province, one of China 's oldest industrial bases, has concrete goals for its state-owned enterprise reform for the second half of the year, local officials say.

The provincial government will help 244 enterprises increase sales, profits, and taxes by 10 percent by the end of the year and help half of the 200 enterprises that are suffering losses to make a profit. It will also help others cut their losses.

It will accelerate the pace of modernizing 60 key firms and change credits to stock in 7 key enterprises like the Anshan Iron and Steel Company.

The Central Government has taken steps nationwide to help money- losing large and medium-sized state-owned enterprises since 1998, which account for about 30 percent of the 7,680 large and medium- sized state-owned enterprises in China.

Sheng Huaren, the minister in charge of the State Economic and Trade Commission, says that 1999 is a crucial year for the three- year reform of state-owned enterprises and the Central Government will try to hold losses to within 15 percent by the year 2000. Liaoning contributed a great deal to China's economic development and it will have a positive effect on the whole country if its reforms go smoothly, according to Vice-premier Wu Bangguo.

Liaoning will stick to its policy of closing down resource- wasting and ecologically-unsound small coal mines, cement plants, oil refineries, steel factories, and thermal power plants and will restructure the oil, chemical, and metallurgy industries.

It will also improve macro-economic controls in small and medium-sized enterprises and get more people with technical and management skills to come to these enterprises.