ADB grant for SOE improvement

The Asian Development Bank has approved a US$500,000 technical assistance grant to improve the financial performance and corporate governance of China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The grant will help strengthen the performance of SOEs by supporting measures such as improving data gathering and analysis under the enterprise performance evaluation system, which covers about 3,800 large and medium-sized enterprises directly under state control and which accounts for about 15 per cent of GDP. The grant will last for about 10 months.