Government Work Report Reveals Key to Industry’s Development

China’s gross domestic product is expected to grow around 6.5% for 2017, according to the central government work report delivered at the opening of the annual session of the National People’s Congress on March 5. Energy consumption per unit of GDP is set to fall by more than 3.4% while emissions of major pollutants will continue to decline, according to the report.
The report listed nine main tasks for the government: cutting overcapacity, destocking, deleveraging, reducing costs and identifying growth areas through reforms; deepening reforms in key areas and key aspects; further unlocking domestic demand potential; promoting innovation-led transformation and upgrading in the “real” economy; promoting the stable development of the agriculture industry and steadily raising farmers’ income; extending the scope of opening-up; enhancing ecological environment protection and management efforts; advancing social development aimed at protecting and improving people’s livelihood; comprehensively strengthening the government's self-construction.
China will deepen its mixed ownership reforms this year, with concrete steps in industries such as power, petroleum, natural gas and railway. It will also push forward with reforms in the power and oil and gas industries to open up competitive sectors.
Delegates from the petroleum and chemical industries agreed that China must stick to its innovation-led strategy to complete the leap from a big petrochemical manufacturer to a petrochemical powerhouse. For 2017, the domestic petrochemical industry aims to make breakthroughs in a number of key technologies and equipment by improving innovation ability, improve the award for technological achievements, and strengthen the applications of patents and new technologies, so as to shift to new growth engines.
The report also said China should beef up its opening-up efforts, push forward with the Belt and Road initiatives, and deepen international cooperation on production capacity, binging more homegrown equipment, technology, standards and services to the global markets for the sake of complementary advantages. A company alliance for international production capacity cooperation in the petrochemical industry was established in September 2016, with more than 70 members to date. Two working groups – the fertilizer group and the Iran group – are already in operation.