Premier Li Keqiang presided over a State Council executive meeting on Sept 18. It was decided at the meeting that general customs clearance time for imports and exports, and related supervision documents will be reduced by another one-third in 2018, with lower clearance fees.

“Efforts should be made to optimize the business environment, and truly reduce costs for foreign trade companies. In this way, opening-up can be further expanded, and a steady growth of imports and exports can be maintained,” Premier Li said.

At the meeting, measures to promote foreign trade growth and customs clearance convenience were decided. Premier Li said that the Chinese economy has developed through opening-up in the past 40 years, and foreign trade is important to domestic industrial upgrading and people’s consumption.

The Premier called for promoting a higher level of trading convenience, and for further reductions of costs for import and export enterprises.

At the meeting, decisions were also made to streamline approval for imports and exports, and supervision documents to be checked at ports will all be interconnected online before Nov 1, 2018.

In addition, bulk resource goods will be cleared first at ports with follow-up inspections. A fast customs-clearance channel will be opened for agricultural and related products.

Meanwhile, charges will be cleared and regulated, and a list of governmental fee items will be published by the end of 2018.

The meeting decided to improve the export tax rebate policy, speed up processing export rebates, and reduce the export check ratio.

The coverage of export credit insurance will also be expanded, and the government will encourage financial institutions to increase credit lending to foreign trade enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises.

Work will be done to encourage and support enterprises to explore diversified markets, and expand the import of raw materials for domestic enterprises.

Premier Li urged all relevant departments to implement the policies as soon as possible, so that the enterprises, especially small and micro enterprises, can benefit from them.