The Reform on “Separation of Operation Permits and Business Licenses” Is Implementing Nationwide

On 10 October 2018, the State Council issued a noticed on the reform of “Separation of Operation Permits and Business Licenses”, which pointed out that from 10 November 2018, the first batch of 106 administrative examination and approval items involved with enterprises around the country will be reformed respectively to one of the 4 ways in: 1) direct cancellation of approval; 2) record-keeping instead of approval; 3) implement informed commitment;or 4) optimization of market access services.

Key contents of State Letter (2018) No. 35 includes:

Explicit methods of reformation

· Direct cancellation of approval process - market entity can carry out relevant business activities after obtaining business license

· Cancellation of approval process, change to record-keeping - marketing entity can carry out relevant business activities after submitting materials, relevant authorities will not conduct approval afterwards

· Simplification of approval process, implement informed commitment system - for certain items that approval cannot be cancelled provisionally, but unqualified behaviors can be rectified during on- and post-market surveillance

· Improvement of measures and optimization of market access service - retain administrative approval for items of major public interests that relate to national security, public safety, financial security, ecological security and public health,and optimize market access services

Coordinating and promoting the reformation of “Separation of Operation Permits and Business Licenses” and“Combination of Multi-licenses”

Through the reformation of “Separation of Operation Permits and Business Licenses”, more market entities are able to operate when they have obtained the license. Efforts will be made on solving the problem of “allowed to access but not allowed to operate”. After the reformation of “Combination of Multi-licenses”, the information and items recorded on the business license are more abundant, the market entity can carry out general business activities with the business license.In principle, items related to information collection, record and publicity, and management for future inspection should be integrated onto the business license, and make it possible for enterprises to achieve a lot of marketing activities using “only one certificate and one barcode”.

Strengthening of on- and post- market surveillance

In order to practically implement the principle of “who approves, who supervises, who's in charge, who supervises”,competent authority of different industries shall earnestly take supervision responsibility. The supervisions of “double random check, one platform publicity” should be promoted,and gradually achieve normalization of the “double random check” in cross-departmental spot check, establish a unified“blacklist” system, and impose restrictions on the untrustworthy entities in industry access. Explore supervision for new technologies, new industries, new models, new products and new formats in a tolerant and prudent way.Strengthen the awareness of the enterprise being the first responsible person in the market, establish and improve credit restore system, give better play to social supervision of professional service organizations, and guide social forces to participate in market order management.

Boosting the collecting and sharing of information

The goal is to achieve the sharing of entity's basic information, related credit information, illegal and irregularity information, and business collaboration. To establish a national unified standard of enterprise legal person's basic information resource base. The departments of administrative approval, and competent authorities of the industry shall record and publicize the information of record-keeping and post-approval items through the “Credit China” website and the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System under the name of the corresponding market entity.