China announced on Monday rental reductions or exemptions for small and micro-sized firms as well as individual businesses and industries suffering an outsized impact from the COVID-19 pandemic, in a bid to cut their operating costs and bolster the country's economy.
In 2022, small and micro-sized service enterprises and individual businesses that are located in the medium and high risk areas of the epidemic and rent property from centrally-administered state-owned enterprises (SOEs) will be exempted from rent for six months in the year, with rent in other areas reduced for three months, according to a circular issued on Monday by China's state-asset regulator - the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC).
The number of small individual businesses in China, which account for two-thirds of the country's market entities, reached a record high in 2021, surpassing the 100 million mark, providing 276 million jobs, data from the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) showed in January.
As of the end of 2021, the number of China's registered individual businesses and industries reached 103 million. Among them, 90 percent were concentrated in the service sector, mainly in wholesale and retail, accommodation, catering and residential services.
