Difficult Problems of Business Register in China Yang Kuankuan Du Dejun Wiesbaden October 2007

Ⅰ. The concept of basic unit in BR Corporate unit (1) It is legally established with its own name, organization and location, and can bear the civil responsibility independently. (2) it owns and uses (or is authorized to use) its assets, incurs obligations and has the right to sign contacts with other units. (3) it keeps separate accounts and is able to compile balance sheet. Corporate unit is basically identical in definition with the institutional unit in SNA of the United Nation

Ⅰ. The concept of basic unit in BR Establishment (1) It is engaged or mainly engaged in a kind of socio-economic activity in a location. (2) It organizes the productive, management or business activities in a relatively independent way. (3) It is able to master the business accounting data, such as the data on revenues and expenditures. Establishment is basically identical with the establishment in of the United Nation

Ⅱ. Coverage of Basic Units in BR 6.086 million corporate units classified by the character of the units ： 4.116 million corporate enterprises 925 thousand corporate government and institutional units 121 thousand corporate social bodies 98 thousand corporate private non- enterprises 825 thousand other organizations 7.825 million establishments 5.732 million single establishments 2.093 million multi-establishments

Ⅲ. Workflow of BR in NBS department organization structure Census Center of Statistics Bureau National level Bureau of Industry and Commerce Bureau of Taxation Provincial level Office for Public Sector Reform Prefecture level Bureau of Civil Affair County level Bureau of quality Control

Updating BR in Non-census year Ⅲ. Workflow of BR in NBS Updating BR in Non-census year Manufacture monthly survey Wholesale and Retail Monthly survey Higher Office County Statistics Office Hotel and Catering Monthly survey Construction and Real estate monthly survey

Updating BR in Non-census year Ⅲ. Workflow of BR in NBS Updating BR in Non-census year Bureau of Industry and Commerce Bureau of Taxation County Statistics Office Higher Office Office for Public Sector Reform Bureau of Civil Affair Bureau of Quality Control

Ⅳ. Difficult Problems of Business Register

（Ⅰ） Frequent changes take place in various units and the capacity of the statistical agencies at the grassroots level is weak After the first economic census undertaken in 2004, the newly increased, changed and cancelled corporate units reached 1.03 million in the survey of basic units in 2005 and increased to 1.28 million in 2006. In addition, the data of specialized annual statistical reports cover about 500 thousand units. As a result, the workload for investigating these units is very arduous.

（Ⅱ）The administrative registration is managed in a decentralized way and it is difficult to use the data of various departments 1.The work for approval of the units and the work for issuing the codes of units are not done concertedly. 2.The law and regulation made by the government for examination, approval, registration and management of the units is often with the features of departmental administration Therefore they are often lack of unified standards. Especially unit registration address is different from operating address, So it is difficult to look for such units. 3.The departments responsible for registration are lack of means for updating unit information.

（Ш）The standards for classifying units are not unique, so that it is difficult to share the data among various departments

1.Legal unit That is approval and registration by the various administrative departments. Problem some of them have no economic activities or have no account of revenue and expenses.

2.Statistics unit It has economic activity and could compile balance sheet or have account of revenue and expenses. Problem unit total number is unequal data sharing is difficult

（Ⅳ）The pattern of management needs to be improved and the function of data processing needs to be strengthened 1.the periods of updating BR at each level are too long 2.The workload of check duplicated units is too large 3.Data processing program not quite unified among various provinces 4.Data processing program only has some simple function and is difficult to compare data from various departments.

Thank you for your attention