The State Council has approved a plan submitted by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) to further promote its function transformation while stressing its role in State-owned capital management and supervision.

In the plan, SASAC promised to make clear its supervision boundary in State-owned assets supervision, without exercising the function of social public administration or interfering with the autonomous operation of enterprises.

It also vowed to improve the State-owned assets supervision system, with efforts to regulate the operation, increase the returns and prevent the loss of State-owned assets.

Also, the plan urged simplifying the supervision items of SASAC while ensuring the property rights and management autonomy of business entities, to enhance the competitiveness and unleash the vitality of enterprises.

Meanwhile, SASAC will strengthen its function in State-owned assets management, which requires reinforced efforts in guiding and assessing the investments of centrally administered State-owned enterprises (SOEs), and a “negative list” approach in the supervision of their investment projects.

The plan also called for optimizing the allocation of State-owned assets, encouraging the flow toward key industries and competitive enterprises, and implementing related policies on the remuneration system reform for SOE executives.

The supervisory role of disciplinary inspection teams should be strengthened to oversee enterprises’ finance and operations, and an accountability system will be set up for illegal operations or investments at SOEs that could result in the loss of State-owned assets.

SASAC will cut a batch of supervision items, including the direct management of the restructuring of SOEs, delegate a batch to SASACs at provincial levels and authorize a number of them to boards of directors at the piloted SOEs.

The plan asked to integrate SASAC’s functions on SOEs reform relating to restructuring, structure optimizing, and reorganization for getting listed on the stock market, to accelerate the establishment of a modern enterprise system. In addition, it urged integrating central SOEs’ functions in promoting technological innovation of SOEs concerning fostering emerging industries, intellectual property protection and branding.

The plan also called for improving supervision methods, to conduct law-based supervision on SOEs operation, targeted supervision for SOEs with varied positioning and development goals, and promote transparency of State-owned assets information.