Should China cancel the housing accumulation fund to solve the problem of returning to production for enterprises?

China news agency, Beijing, 4 February (Xia Bin) Under the influence of the epidemic, China enterprises are facing difficulties in resuming their work and production. The biggest problem is that they can't make ends meet. Due to the high cost and reduced income, it is necessary to "reduce the burden" for enterprises to tide over the difficulties.

Recently, Huang, vice chairman of China International Economic Exchange Center and former mayor of Chongqing, published an article "Some Suggestions on Economic Development and Manufacturing Industry Resumption under Epidemic Situation", suggesting that in order to solve the difficulties of enterprises resuming production, the enterprise housing provident fund system can be considered to be abolished.

He pointed out that the housing provident fund system was learned from Singapore in the early 1968+0990' s, and now the real estate in China has been marketized, and commercial banks have become the main providers of mortgage loans, so the existence of housing provident fund is of little significance, and canceling it can directly reduce the cost of enterprises and employees 12%.

In this context, should China cancel the housing provident fund?

"The matter of canceling the provident fund should be considered from a long-term perspective, and we should not rush to conclusions or cancel it immediately." Gu Yunchang, chairman of the All-China Federation of Real Estate Chambers of Commerce, told China News Service that it may be appropriate to suspend the payment of provident fund. The suspension time depends on the development of the epidemic, and enterprises can apply for suspension according to their different nature and conditions. It is unrealistic to stop all of them.

Yin Zhongli, director of the Real Estate Finance Research Center of the Institute of Finance of China Academy of Social Sciences, agrees with the above view. He pointed out that for enterprises that do have difficulties, they can adopt a policy of suspending or even temporarily exempting the payment of provident fund, or appropriately reduce the proportion of provident fund contributions as a whole.

There are local examples. In response to the epidemic situation in COVID-19, the Measures to Support Enterprises to Rid Through the Difficulties issued by Shenzhen on February 7 proposed to reduce the proportion of housing accumulation fund paid by enterprises.

Specifically, affected by the epidemic, enterprises that have difficulties in paying housing provident fund can apply to reduce the proportion of housing provident fund payment to 3% according to law, and the period does not exceed 12 months; Or apply for deferred payment of housing provident fund for a period not exceeding 12 months.

At present, people who buy a house, pay rent, decorate a house, suffer from serious illness or cancel their households (retired or immigrated) can apply for withdrawal of provident fund. It is worth noting that the Housing Fund Management Center of the central state organs issued a notice on the website, which included novel coronavirus's pneumonia in the scope of housing provident fund for severe illness, and patients could withdraw their own housing provident fund for medical expenses.

Zhang Dawei, chief analyst of Zhongyuan Real Estate, stressed that the provident fund is actually equivalent to the disposable income of employees. If the provident fund is abolished, enterprises will reduce their salaries in disguise, but the salary reduction of enterprises should not be introduced by the state, but should be decided by enterprises themselves.

"The provident fund is tax-free, which means that you can enjoy this tax-free discount regardless of whether you will use the provident fund loan or not. If it is cancelled, the actual income will remain the same as before, and the tax payment will increase. " Zhang Dawei said that if the provident fund is inconvenient to use, it should be a problem of structural reform of the provident fund, not a problem of cancellation. "Just like renting a house into the scope of use of the provident fund, this is the role of reform."