China News Service, Beijing, March 16th (Reporter Zhou Rui) China's National Development and Reform Commission announced on the 16th that the agency has revised the "Central Pricing Catalog" (2015 edition), and the revised pricing items have been reduced by nearly 30%. Effective from May 1, 2020.
The "Central Pricing Catalog" is a list that regulates the pricing authority and scope of the relevant departments of the State Council of China.
According to reports, the amendments are mainly focused on three aspects: First, to consolidate the results of recent price and fee reforms. Deletion of prices and charges that have been explicitly liberalized or cancelled by the country since 2015, mainly involving railways, civil aviation, ports, postal services, banks, as well as salt, visa processing services, national reserve sugar and meat trading services, VAT tax control system products and maintenance Services, academic degree certification services, citizenship certification services, etc.
The second is to highlight the pricing supervision of monopoly links and the direction of market-oriented reform of competitive links. For example, the price of electricity and natural gas, in accordance with the reform idea of "opening the two ends and controlling the middle", changed the "electricity" project to "transmission and distribution" and the "natural gas" project to "oil and gas pipeline transportation".
The third is to adjust pricing responsibilities based on institutional reform responsibilities. For example, the pricing department of some special drugs and blood has been adjusted according to the responsibilities of institutional reform.
The National Development and Reform Commission pointed out that the current revision of the "Central Pricing Catalog" fully reflects the significant progress made in pricing reform since 2015. At present, China has formed a price mechanism focusing on market regulation, and the proportion of market-adjusted prices exceeds 97%.
The relevant person in charge of the National Development and Reform Commission introduced that the revised "Central Pricing Catalogue" mainly includes 7 categories such as power transmission and distribution, oil and gas pipeline transportation, basic transportation, major water supply engineering water supply, important postal services, important professional services, special drugs and blood There are 16 items of government pricing items to be reserved mainly for the following considerations:
The first is the network-type natural monopoly link. It is a common practice in mature market economy countries to implement strict government price and cost supervision on network-type natural monopoly links. This reserved transmission and distribution, oil and gas pipeline transportation, water supply for major water conservancy projects, etc., belong to this category.
The second is important public utilities and public welfare services. Such pricing items involve basic people's livelihood needs, and are closely related to the interests of the people, such as residential and agricultural electricity, basic postal services, basic services of commercial banks, bank card processing fees, special medicines and blood.
Third, areas that do not have the conditions for market-based competition. For individual goods and services that do not yet have the conditions for market-oriented competition during the transition period, government pricing is temporarily retained, and the market-oriented reform direction is further clarified. (Finish)