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China grants leniency to SOEs

By Hao Zhou (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-12-17 16:16

China will relax its performance evaluation measures for State-owned enterprises (SOEs) in 2009, according to officials from the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC).

The move is due to the major economic crisis, as few of the SOEs are expected to do as well as in normal times by the SASAC, the central government agency to oversee the nation's largest SOEs.

New measures are being drafted and will be submitted for higher authorities' approval after the Chinese New Year in the end of January, the SASAC said.

According to the current evaluation measures, an SOE is considered a failure if it cannot manage to exceed the average results of the foregoing three years. But inevitably, the SASAC will no longer insist on this criterion in 2009, said Cheng Wei, an official with the SASAC's research institute. "Lower targets will be required instead," Cheng said.

SOEs under SASAC's supervision already reported a year-on-year drop in profit of 26 percent in the first 11 months this year, according to figures recently released by the agency.