China’s government has agreed to give state-owned enterprises (SOEs) a range of concessions on taxes and fees to speed up their restructuring into modern corporate entities and ensure they meet a deadline set for the end of this year. The decision removes some key obstacles to progress on overhauling the corporate governance system for SOEs that’s part of the government’s long-running efforts to modernize and restructure the bloated state-owned sector and make companies better run, more efficient and more competitive. At the Central Economic Work Conference in December 2016, the government set a deadline for all SOEs owned by the central government to turn themselves into limited liability or joint-stock companies by the end of 2017. But 69 of the 101 central SOEs and 3,200 of their subsidiaries, worth a combined $2 trillion, have so far failed to undergo the transformation, according to Caixin.
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