China announces economic reform priorities for 2015

The State Council, China's cabinet, unveiled on Monday this year's priorities for economic reforms.

The reforms are aimed at adding new impetus to the country's economic growth, it said in a statement on the government website.

The reform priorities include measures to streamline bureaucracy and deregulate power to lower levels, promote the yuan's convertibility under the capital account and launch a trial scheme to connect the Shenzhen and Hong Kong stock exchanges.  

The central government promised to implement existing reform policies and roll out new pro-growth measures this year to stimulate the market and seek new growth potential.

The country's economic growth in the first quarter slowed to 7 percent, the lowest level since the financial crisis in 2009, which prompted policymakers to accelerate an economic overhaul.

The government vowed to cut red tape, loosen control on market access and investment and improve pricing mechanisms for public services.

The government will also push reforms of State-owned enterprises in key industries such as electricity by reorganizing and consolidating them to improve efficiency, and it will support the participation of private firms to make the market less monopolistic.

It also pledged to continue to implement taxation reform, expanding value-added tax to the construction, property and finance sectors and adjusting the resource tax, personal income tax and environmental protection tax.

In the financial sector, the country will speed up the development of private banks and small financial institutions, and issue a guideline to ensure sound development of Internet finance.

The country will also open up its financial sector and build a financial mechanism that better benefits the real economy, said the statement.

The State Council said the government will further liberalize interest rates, make the yuan more flexible against other currencies and promote  yuan in cross-border settlement.

Reforms on urbanization, widening funding channels for urban construction, improving the current rigid household registration system, and accelerating reforms on rural land to boost agriculture were also all identified as priorities.