Hubei government announces measures to optimize business environment

The Hubei government is hustling to work out a detailed plan on optimizing its business environment to promote the region's economic and social development amid the epidemic, the province's development and reform commission said on Friday.

Du Haiyang, deputy director of the Hubei Provincial Development and Reform Commission, said at a press conference that based on the pain points market players encounter and care about, the Hubei government had narrowed down various problems, formed a 100-task list, and condensed the solutions into 30 measures.

The measures were launched Thursday by the Hubei Provincial Development and Reform Commission. They mainly center on encouraging e-government, simplifying the government's service flow, cutting unnecessary requirements for qualification of enterprises, promoting reform on separating permits from the business license, boosting business environment assessments, and raising the quality and efficiency of real estate registration services.

Pan Helin, executive director of the Digital Economy Academy of the Zhongnan University of Economics and Law in Hubei, said: "Currently, the whole of Hubei is focusing on recovering work on the basis of epidemic prevention and control. With thousands of tasks at hand, the region carried out 30 measures, highlighting its determination to improve its business environment and bolster its economy."

The introduction of the measures tackles problems in Hubei's business environment. It raised pragmatic requirements for the government, proposed concrete solving methods, and if effectively implemented, the measures are expected to greatly improve the region's business environment.

Specifically, the measures require that the government's approval period for business startups should meet the "210" standard — the two links (application and approval) should be completed in one day with zero fees.

In addition, the approval process for construction projects should be limited to 100 working days. "By the unification of approval flow, the information platform, the management system and the supervision method, currently, the entire province have basically achieved its goal," said Tan Huachu, chief engineer of the Department of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of Hubei province.

E-government is also promoted. According to the Hubei administration for market regulation, since 2018 the government has been exploring reforms on intelligent enterprise registration, enabling firms to handle businesses online.

Starting in January, a batch of pilot cities, including Huanggang, Wuhan, Xiangyang and Yichang, began promoting e-government, enabling individual industrial and commercial households to receive business licenses in 3 minutes, said Peng Mingfang, deputy director of the Hubei administration for market regulation.

"In the next step, we will generalize e-government reform and constantly raise the region's 'intelligence' level for enterprise registration," he added.

Pan noted the 30 measures mainly raised requirements for the government's working efficiency, market convenience and supervision level. It is expected when the measures are actually executed, tens of thousands of enterprises will be attracted to invest and contribute to the region's economic development.