Government Releases Details of Rural Subsidy Program
Xinhua.net, 4/23/09
The Chinese government has announced further details and updates to its program to provide rural areas with subsidized appliances and consumer electronics. Of the 13% subsidy offered for eligible products, 80% will be paid for by the central government and the remaining 20% will be paid for by provincial-level governments, with the exception of Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Tibet and Guangxi autonomous regions and the areas worst affected by last year's earthquake in Sichuan, where the central government will cover the complete subsidy.
The government will also trial a new simplified subsidy approval and reimbursement system in 16 provinces and cities including Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Dalian, Heilongjiang, Anhui, Shandong, Qingdao, Henan, Hubei, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Chongqing, Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu. Trials will run from May 1 until July 31, with subsidies to be paid within 7 days. Areas not covered by the trials must provide subsidies within 12 days of application. For remote rural areas or areas not connected to the banking network, subsidies should be provided directly by the sales outlet within 15 working days, and the sales outlet should then seek reimbursement from the relevant government department.
The government also announced maximum limits for products eligible for the subsidy including a limit of RMB 3,500 for televisions and computers, and a RMB 1,000 limit for mobile phones. The program itself will tentatively run for a total of 4 years, meaning that provinces which began trialling the subsidy program early will stop offering the subsidies by November 2011, with other provinces finishing the program by January 2013.
Keywords: government subsidy retail hardware timetable consumer electronics rural government initiative policy
Sending
