Original title: Reducing institutional transaction costs to better stimulate the vitality of business entities
In a fully competitive market environment, the comprehensive operating cost is the key decision basis for enterprises to go where. In addition to operating expenses such as labor, rent, water and electricity, and logistics, institutional transaction costs are also an important factor for business entities to consider. Unlike the cost reduction and burden reduction of operating expenses, institutional transaction costs can not be reduced by the enterprise's own efforts, and they are diverse, flexible and fuzzy. How to move the institutional transaction cost curve downward is not only the key and difficult point to promote the development of enterprises, but also the necessary question for Hainan Free Trade Port to create a first-class business environment.
Basic category of institutional transaction cost
Institutional transaction costs, also known as institutional costs, refer to the costs brought by various institutional tools of the government, that is, the costs or expenses of economy, time and opportunities paid by enterprises to comply with a series of laws, regulations, rules and regulations formulated by the government in the process of operation.
From the perspective of cost patterns, institutional transaction costs can be divided into explicit costs and implicit costs. Explicit costs include taxes, financing, enterprise related charges, etc. In recent years, local governments have made full use of a series of combined efforts, such as easing, exemption, reduction, refund, refund, and compensation, to do their best in finance, make all the policies available, and reduce the expenses if they can. With the policy dividend of "real gold and silver", enterprises have actually reduced their burden. Implicit costs include various market access restrictions, approval permits, bidding and government procurement transaction costs, as well as negotiation and decision-making costs. They are more hidden, more complex, and difficult to be directly reflected in the book. They are often more likely to affect the normal production and operation activities of business entities, as well as their confidence and expectations in participating in market economic activities.
Influential factors of high institutional transaction costs
Reducing the institutional transaction cost is actually a public system that seeks to minimize the cost of resource allocation, so as to realize the effective supply of the system and optimize the relationship between the government and the market. From the perspective of the government, the reasons that affect the current high cost of institutional transactions can be roughly divided into the following categories:
Government functions are offside. In recent years, governments at all levels have stepped up efforts to cancel and delegate administrative examination and approval items, and achieved great results. But actually, there are still some problems to be solved. For example, the cancellation and delegation of administrative approval items are not enough, the administrative approval behavior is not standardized, and online approval is a mere formality. Enterprises still need to spend a lot of time, capital and human costs to handle certain approval items, which restricts the market to play a decisive role in resource allocation.
The government function is absent. The asymmetry of supply and demand information is an important reason for the difficulty of enterprise financing and land use. Inadequate publicity of government information and policies and regulations will often increase the cost of enterprises to obtain production resources. In addition, the absence of government regulation will also lead to the increase of institutional transaction costs of enterprises. For example, the insufficient protection of intellectual property rights has led to the infringement of enterprise innovation achievements and increased the cost of rights protection.
Government functions are misplaced. The excessive discretionary space of administrative power will lead to problems such as power rent-seeking and power abuse. The government procurement and bidding are not transparent and fair enough, as well as dilapidation, prevarication, local protection, market monopoly, etc. The alienation of these powers will significantly increase the operating burden and risk of enterprises.
Necessity of Reducing Institutional Transaction Cost and Countermeasures
Only by better stimulating the vitality of business entities can we provide greater impetus for economic and social development. How to stimulate vitality? The key is to let enterprises go on the battlefield lightly and develop freely. Reducing institutional transaction costs will help to improve the total factor productivity of enterprises, further clarify the relationship between the government and the market, and stimulate market vitality and endogenous power for development. On the one hand, institutional transaction costs are the rigid costs faced by business entities. Reducing this part of costs is conducive to enhancing enterprises' innovation ability, improving supply quality and efficiency; On the other hand, clarifying and eliminating unnecessary and unreasonable institutional transaction costs will also help regulate the operation of government power, break through the "blockages" that hinder economic development, the "pain points" that affect the entrepreneurship of officials, and the "blind spots" of market supervision. It can be said that reducing institutional transaction costs is the key to optimizing the business environment.
In recent years, the CPC Central Committee, the State Council, the Hainan Provincial Party Committee and the Hainan Provincial People's Government have intensively introduced a package of policies to promote new breakthroughs in reducing institutional transaction costs with practical measures. At present, institutional transaction costs still have much room for decline. At the same time, institutional transaction costs should be "downsized", and more importantly, they should be prevented from rebounding. Therefore, it is necessary to accurately grasp the following relationships:
Grasp the relationship between "tension" and "relaxation". The more standardized and scientific the government's management of market behavior, the lower the institutional transaction cost. First, it is necessary to reasonably relax the control over the market, further reduce the threshold for enterprise access by continuing to deepen the reform of the "minimalist approval" system, and accelerate the implementation of the negative list system for market access, giving more initiative to business entities; Second, we need to effectively improve the effectiveness of government regulation, vigorously promote credit regulation and smart regulation, solidly promote relevant legislation, law enforcement and judicial work in the field of business environment, and create a market environment in which all ownership entities use resource elements equally according to law, participate in competition openly, fairly and fairly, and are equally protected by law.
Grasp the relationship between "standard" and "foundation". Institutional transaction costs remain high, behind which is a "old account" left over by history. To really reduce them, we must take multiple measures to address both the symptoms and root causes. First, we need to comprehensively clean up the acts of arbitrary charges, apportionments and fines involving enterprises, solve the problem of government arrears in enterprise accounts, and accelerate the revision or abolishment of policies and measures that hinder the unified market and fair competition; Second, we should speed up the implementation of the list system of powers and responsibilities of government departments, build an honest government, improve the system of administrative system according to law, and prevent the inaction, slow action, and disorderly action of power from becoming "obstacles" in the development of enterprises.
Grasp the relationship between "far" and "near". Reducing institutional transaction costs is a systematic and long-term task. In the face of different economic situations and different business entities, it is necessary to dynamically adjust the accuracy and pertinence of cost reduction policies, so as to achieve the coordination between phased relief and institutional burden reduction. For example, on the one hand, Hainan can continue and optimize some phased preferential tax policies, on the other hand, it needs to pilot the "zero tariff" and "low tax rate" policies in a wider range, study and promote the "simple tax system", and guide enterprises to make full use of the preferential tax policies of Hainan Free Trade Port.
In general, further straightening out the relationship between the government and the market is the key to reducing institutional transaction costs. Hainan needs to deepen the reform of the factor market, improve the marketization of land, labor, capital, technology, data and other factors, innovate the supply mode of public services, improve the efficiency of public service supply, better play the role of the government, and realize the complementary advantages and cooperation between the government and the market. In this process, governments at all levels should not only change the concept of governance, transform the management concept into the service concept, be a good "shop waiter" for enterprise development, but also make good use of the "key" of innovation. For example, make good use of reform and innovation achievements such as "land supermarket", "machine management bidding", and resolve the problem of cost reduction and burden reduction from the system, technology and other aspects.
（ Xiang Zhangguo, Author's unit: Enterprise Promotion Division, Department of Business Environment Construction of Hainan Province)
