Measures to foster recovery coming

China will implement several measures to foster a robust economic recovery throughout this year, the country's top economic regulator said on Thursday.

The planned measures will include acceleration of the legislative process to enact a law on promoting the development of the private sector and revision to the negative list for foreign investment access.

"The country is gearing up to take a series of practical measures to boost growth of the private sector," said Yuan Da, deputy secretary-general of the National Development and Reform Commission, at a news conference in Beijing.

"The focus will be placed on effectively addressing the challenges faced by private businesses, boosting business confidence and ensuring tangible benefits."

He said the legal and institutional arrangements will be made to ensure the equal treatment of private and State-owned enterprises. More efforts will be made to better implement the existing supportive policies and encourage more private capital to participate in the construction of major projects at the national level and projects that address weak links in the economy.

During the news conference, Liu Sushe, deputy head of the NDRC, said the country will promptly introduce policies to promote high-standard opening-up. It will continue to revise the national version of the negative list for foreign investment access, comprehensively eliminate restrictions on foreign investment access in the manufacturing sector and expedite the introduction and implementation of comprehensive policies to attract and utilize foreign capital.

The negative list specifies the industry sectors that are off limits to foreign investors. Global businesses can operate in any sector that is not on the list.

Through a package of practical measures, such as aligning with high-standard international economic and trade rules, the NDRC will focus on addressing the difficulties and obstacles faced by foreign-funded enterprises.

The NDRC has recently launched its seventh batch of major foreign investment projects. The new batch includes 11 foreign-funded projects with a total investment of over $15 billion, mainly in fields like biomedicine, automobile manufacturing, new energy batteries and the chemical industry, Liu said.

Despite facing challenges from a more complicated environment, a lack of effective domestic demand and weakening expectations, China still possesses favorable conditions and great opportunities, which outweigh the challenges, Liu said.

Elsewhere, at a forum hosted by China News Service in Beijing on Thursday, Zhang Junkuo, chairman of the China Development Research Foundation, said that China should urgently deepen reform and expand opening-up centering on promoting high-quality economic development, by paying attention to social concerns and making substantial breakthroughs in solving problems.

The country can better implement policy measures promoting the growth of private enterprises, he said, suggesting the authorities roll out detailed implementation measures for policies already in place, to make them more feasible and effective in addressing problems facing private enterprises. For instance, the private sector faces some invisible barriers when it tries to take part in government procurement bidding and finance, and also when it seeks to take part in major sci-tech projects.

At the same forum, Wei Jianguo, former deputy commerce minister, said that among the three main drivers of growth — consumption, exports and investment — exports will be the first to rebound this year.

"China's foreign trade has already become stabilized with an upward momentum, and growth rates of exports and imports will both enter expansionary territory during the first quarter, thanks to effects gradually delivered from supportive policies," Wei said.