Premier Li Keqiang said on Oct 14 that more efforts should be made to further simplify business registration, in order to cut costs for startup businesses.

“There are still too many certificates required for starting a business,” he said at the State Council executive meeting, adding that the government should eliminate more certificates.

The reform of business registration can boost entrepreneurship and create more jobs, said the Premier. “Chinese people have the courage and wisdom for innovation. So the key is to break the obstacles to their potential.”

A number of measures have been put in place since 2015, merging the business license, organization code certificate and certificate of taxation registration into one. Two other certificates — social insurance registration certificate and statistics registration certificate — were eliminated as of Oct 1, 2016.

At the executive meeting, officials told the Premier that the reform of streamlining business registration is on track. And some local governments are preparing to merge more certificates.

Thanks to the reform, in the first half of 2016, 2.6 millions new companies have been started, a 28.6 percent increase from a year earlier. New business registrations grew from about 12,000 per day in 2015 to 14,600 in the first eight months of this year, while the number was only 6,900 before the reform.

Apart from cutting red tape, Premier Li also stressed improving government supervision of startup companies. “Unreasonable disturbance from authorities should be avoided,” he said.

The Premier also called for better use of internet in the reform, so that all registration procedures and supervision can run online and be open to the public.