Wang Renlin: Chongqing aims to strive for 1,250 intelligent transformation projects this year, benefiting thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises.

People's Daily Online Chongqing, January 30 (Liu Zhengning, Huang Jun) Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are an important force in promoting economic growth, employment, and industrial upgrading. In recent years, various policy measures to promote the development of private and small and medium-sized enterprises have been introduced from the central to local levels, providing great opportunities for enterprises.

In this context, how can we promote the development and growth of small and medium-sized enterprises in Chongqing to achieve high-quality development? On January 29, Wang Renlin, a member of the Chongqing Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and deputy director of the Municipal Economic Information Commission, accepted an exclusive interview with People's Daily Online and provided a detailed interpretation. Small and medium-sized enterprises are an important component of China's national economy and the most active economic cells, playing an irreplaceable role in promoting economic growth, increasing employment, technological innovation, and social harmony and stability.

Wang Renlin introduced that in the past year, small and medium-sized enterprises in Chongqing have shown the characteristics of "two stabilizations and two innovations," making four outstanding contributions.

First, the contribution to stable growth is outstanding. Preliminary statistics show that in 2018, small and medium-sized enterprises in Chongqing achieved an added value of nearly 900 billion yuan, accounting for 45% of the city's total economic output, with a year-on-year growth of 6.5%. The contribution rate to the city's economic growth reached 52%, an increase of 3 percentage points from the previous year.

Second, the contribution to stable employment is outstanding. In 2018, small and medium-sized enterprises added more than 500,000 employees, accounting for nearly 70% of the city's new urban employment, with a cumulative total of 8.024 million employees in small and medium-sized enterprises.

Third, the contribution to promoting entrepreneurship is outstanding. In 2018, 134,000 new small and micro enterprises were established, a year-on-year increase of 12.3%, reaching a cumulative total of 800,000. Small and medium-sized enterprises are the main battlefield for entrepreneurship.

Fourth, the contribution to promoting innovation is outstanding. In the past three years, the R&D investment of small and medium-sized enterprises in our city has continued to grow by more than 15%, with a trend of continuous increase. The number of invention patents held accounts for 80% of the total newly added in the city that year, and small and medium-sized enterprises have become the main force of innovation.

Currently, global manufacturing is accelerating its transition to a digital and intelligent era, and intelligent manufacturing has become an inevitable choice for the survival and development of manufacturing enterprises. How can small and medium-sized enterprises make good use of intelligence to achieve high-quality development? What are the goals?

Wang Renlin said that this year, the Municipal Economic Information Commission will focus on four aspects. The first is to promote the intelligent transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises. In 2018, Chongqing introduced an implementation plan for intelligent manufacturing, with 203 intelligent transformation projects, recognizing 76 municipal-level demonstration digital workshops and intelligent factories. The average production efficiency of demonstration projects increased by 67.3%.

In 2019, Chongqing will increase efforts to strive to implement 1,250 intelligent transformation projects throughout the year, focusing on machine substitution, information system integration applications, benefiting nearly 1,000 small and medium-sized enterprises.

At the same time, guide small and medium-sized enterprises to follow a specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative development path, cultivating a large number of "specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative" small and medium-sized enterprises with prominent main businesses and strong competitiveness, striving to cultivate more than 200 enterprises that meet municipal standards for "specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative" enterprises, more than 20 "little giant" enterprises, and 10 "invisible champion" enterprises.

How to help small and medium-sized enterprises solve financing problems? Wang Renlin said that the Municipal Economic Information Commission will focus on implementing the financing action plan of 10,000 enterprises with 100 billion yuan: first, to expand and enhance the emergency policy for transfer loans, by linking districts and counties with social capital, expanding the scale of emergency turnover funds for small and medium-sized enterprises in the city to 2 billion yuan, and transferring loans of more than 15 billion yuan for more than 2,000 enterprises throughout the year, saving financing costs of about 400 million yuan.

Second, increase the discounting of bills for small and micro enterprises, striving to achieve bank acceptance bill discount financing of more than 70 billion yuan for more than 1,600 small and micro enterprises through the bill discount center, saving financing costs of 300 million yuan for enterprises.

Third, implement the incentive effect of guarantee fee subsidy policies and risk compensation mechanisms, encouraging and guiding guarantee institutions in the city to provide guaranteed loans for small and medium-sized enterprises, guiding more than 30 guarantee institutions to provide guaranteed loans with low guarantee fees for 1,000 small and medium-sized enterprises totaling 5 billion yuan.

Fourth, innovate and carry out pilot reforms of commercial value credit loans for small and medium-sized enterprises. Striving to help 2,000 small and medium-sized enterprises obtain 3 billion yuan in pure credit loans without collateral or guarantees.

Fifth, support financing professional service institutions to assist small and medium-sized enterprises in financing. In 2019, we strive to promote financing service institutions such as the equity transfer center to help 4,000 small and medium-sized enterprises achieve financing of more than 12 billion yuan.

To provide a good working space, network space, and resource-sharing space for technology-based small and micro enterprises, in 2019, Chongqing will focus on cultivating 20 building industrial parks such as Chongqing Dadi Gonggu, mainly concentrated in emerging industries such as big data and E-Business. Wang Renlin said that it is expected that in 2019, more than 1,400 enterprises will settle in the 20 key cultivated building industrial parks, providing more than 31,000 job positions.

"We will adhere to high-quality development as the fundamental requirement, focus on an innovation-driven strategy led by intelligence, take specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative small and medium-sized enterprises as the starting point, increase financing services, platform services, and carrier services, strive to improve the business environment, guide small and medium-sized enterprises to adopt new technologies, develop new industries, cultivate new business formats, and create new models, and fully promote the quality transformation, efficiency transformation, and power transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises, striving to achieve quality, effective, and sustainable development of small and medium-sized enterprises in the city." Wang Renlin said.