SOEs ordered to declare overseas assets

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China's state-owned assets regulator on Friday reiterated measures ordering centrally-administered state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to declare their assets overseas in a bid to stop a corruption- and loss-prone loopholes.

All of the 117 centrally-administered SOEs must submit a report concerning their management arrangement, branches and staff of assets overseas to the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) before the end of the year, according to a SASAC statement on its website.

State assets overseas must be regulated and their management must be optimized to protect their safety, the SASAC said.

Individual equity holdings of state assets overseas on behalf of SOEs, which led to losses in the past, must be rectified and ownership must be transferred from individuals to corporations.

The centrally-administered SOEs should create special documents on the state assets held by individuals and their offshore companies and submit a report to the SASAC before March 31, 2012, according to the SASAC.

All centrally-administered SOEs should report to the SASAC on their overseas assets before April 30 every year, it said.

The net profit of the China's centrally-administrated SOEs rose 40.2 percent year-on-year to 848.98 billion yuan (133 billion U.S. dollars) in 2010.

Due to hasty investment decisions and a lack of proper management or supervision, China's centrally-administered SOEs are more likely to report losses on their overseas investments.

For example, China Railway Construction Corporation Limited, a Hong Kong-listed company under the control of state-owned China Railway Construction Corporation, suffered 4.1 billion yuan in losses from a light railway construction project in Saudi Arabia.

In the statement, the SASAC did not give the latest details on the amount of China's state assets overseas. According to SASAC's statistics for 2010, Chinese enterprises had more than 15,000 overseas branches with outbound direct investment totaling 258.8 billion U.S. dollars and overseas assets exceeding 1 trillion U.S. dollars.

As for the centrally-administered SOEs, their overseas assets totaled 4 trillion yuan in 2009.