SMEs make gains while economy sees rough times
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China's small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have sailed through their worst times, another sign that China's economy is rebounding from the impact of the world credit crunch that started in 2008, according to a senior central government official.
"The small- and medium-sized enterprises are riding a recovery as a result of a basket of stimulus measures that were released last year," Zhu Hongren, chief engineer at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, told the "Fortune 500 & APEC SMEs" forum Thursday in Fuzhou, Fujian Province.
Zhu said during the first five months of this year the industrial output by Chinese SMEs grew by 35.1 percent year-on-year, compared with a meager 5.9 percent during the first two months of 2009, SMEs' worst time since the outbreak of the global financial crisis.
He said for the five months, China's SMEs with annual sales over 5 million yuan ($736,020) reported a sales-production ratio of 97.3 percent, up 0.57 percentage points from the same period last year.
Zhu added the shrinking world market during the first two months of last year has driven down Chinese SMEs' profits down by 19.3 percent year-on-year, causing legions of factory shutdowns and armies of jobless workers.
China has over 50 million SMEs, which account for 80 percent of the country's jobs, 60 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) and half of the national tax revenues, according to the Ministry of Commerce.
Beijing enacted a slew of expansionary fiscal and monetary policies last year to counteract the impact from the financial turmoil, including generous tax reduction for SMEs, making it easier for them to get loans.
All these measures seem to have brought China through the impact of the global financial crisis when the country recorded a GDP growth of 11.9 percent in the first quarter this year after 8.7 percent growth for 2009.
Analysts widely believed China's GDP will expand over 9 percent for this year.
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