ThePaper.cn:

This year, what targeted measures have been taken to energize various types of business entities and support enterprises in achieving better development? For example, what measures have been taken to clear arrears owed to enterprises and support platform enterprises in achieving better growth? Thank you.

Shen Danyang:

I'll answer this question. Last year, the State Council introduced a series of targeted policy measures to energize business entities, as you mentioned. These measures focused on pressing concerns of enterprises, especially SMEs and private enterprises, addressing issues such as overdue payments and the imposition of arbitrary charges, quotas, and fines. These policies have proven highly effective. This year's government work report once again called for fully stimulating the vitality of various business entities, with a sustained focus on key issues of concern to enterprises and targeted measures to reduce burdens, improve services, and drive development. Three priority tasks have been identified to this end.

The first priority is to step up efforts to address the problem of overdue payments to enterprises. Last year, a nationwide campaign was launched to accelerate the clearance of overdue payments to enterprises, helping resolve a number of long-standing arrears cases. This year, we will continue to coordinate the allocation of local government special-purpose bond quotas to support arrears clearance, with financial policies playing a stronger role. At the same time, complementary policies will also be introduced under the Regulation on Ensuring Timely Payments to SMEs, urging central and state-owned enterprises to take the lead in meeting payment obligations, strengthening standardized management over bills and electronic accounts receivable certificates, and driving better outcomes in arrears clearance.

The second priority is to promote mutually beneficial development among platform enterprises and the operators and workers within those platforms. Online platforms have become a vital foundation for small merchants and enterprises to run businesses and launch ventures. Together with platform enterprises, in-platform operators and workers form the broader platform economy ecosystem. This relationship should be built on win-win development. This year, relevant national departments will make full use of newly introduced measures for supervising rules on online trading platforms, continue to regulate platform fee practices, and draw up measures to protect the rights and interests of workers in new forms of employment. They will urge platform enterprises to further strengthen self-discipline and optimize services to genuinely safeguard the lawful rights and interests of in-platform operators and workers and boost innovation-driven development.

The third priority is to provide targeted support for self-employed individuals, tailored to different types and categories of businesses. There are numerous self-employed individuals in our country. They not only play an important role in boosting the economy and promoting innovation and entrepreneurship, but also directly create jobs for nearly 300 million urban and rural residents. This is a very large number. Just like small neighborhood restaurants and shops, these modest businesses truly serve thousands of households and are very important for stabilizing employment and ensuring people's livelihoods. Relevant departments will this year accelerate efforts to nurture "famous, special, excellent and new" self-employed businesses. They will continue to refine the classification of individual businesses by category and provide targeted services such as startup assistance, skills training, digital transformation, and financing and credit. These efforts will help address difficulties in transformation and upgrading, access to financing, and market expansion.

Thank you for your question.