Heilongjiang province this year will pay 26 million yuan in subsidies to train 30,000 poor rural residents.

Twenty thousand people will take general vocational training, while the other 10,000 people will focus on welding, digital control, machining and other professional trainings.

To help alleviate poverty, the government has trained 135,000 rural residents during the past two years.

Food waste treatment

Food waste in Fujian province's three seaside cities - Fuzhou, Xiamen and Quanzhou - will be targeted for recycling this year, according to a notice recently released by the provincial construction department.

Based on the three experimental units, a systematic food waste treatment system will be set up in 2009 and established in other cities in the province by 2010.

"The new measure is intended to standardize the collection, transportation and treatment of food waste, including used cooking oil. So far, a few hi-tech companies can utilize the old oil to produce bio-diesel," says an official with the provincial economic and trade commission.

Property transaction info

The State-owned companies in Guizhou province now have access to property transaction information on a website that will optimize the allocation of their resources. The website, which covers both assets and equity exchange, is jointly built by Guizhou Sunshine Assets and Equity Exchange and Chongqing United Assets and Equity Exchange.

There are 1,310 State-owned companies in Guizhou province. Originally, the State-owned companies within the province can only conduct assets transactions within the province. Now they can carry on equity exchanges and publish the transaction information countrywide.

Business loans

Young entrepreneurs in Chongqing municipality are now offered interest-free loans to start their businesses.

The so-called "sunshine action" is sponsored by Bank of Chongqing and fund (which totals 1 billion yuan) will be used to make loans to young people with promising business plans, including laid-off or unemployed youth, military veterans and university graduates.

The maximum loan amount is 50,000 yuan for individual and 400,000 yuan for partnerships, and the longest duration of the loan is two years.

Jiangxi sewage treatment

The Jiangxi provincial government plans to invest 4.55 billion yuan within two years on sewage treatment construction in the province's 78 cities and counties.

According to the plan, 78 sewage treatment plants will be built in the coming two years and the whole project will be implemented in two phases. By June 1, 2010, all the province's sewage treatment equipment will be put into use, and the sewage treatment ratio is expected to reach 70 percent at that time.

Currently, there are 13 sewage treatment plants and the sewage treatment ratio is about 29.8 percent.

Subsidies tied to CPI

Low-income residents in Jiangsu province will get subsidies if the quarterly growth of the province's consumer price index (CPI) exceeds 3 percentage points, according to a notice jointly released by the provincial civil affairs department and the finance department.

The policy targets the province's 1.3 million low-income local residents. In the first quarter, the province's CPI reached 7.2 percent and 23 million yuan has been paid off.

Taiwan trade

The mainland witnessed a fast development in trade with Taiwan in the first two months of this year, as a string of policies benefiting Taiwan businesses were carried out. The General Administration of Customs said the January-February trade volume of the two sides across the Straits amounted to $20.5 billion, a growth of 23.8 percent on the same period of last year. The growth rate was 8.4 percentage points higher than the year-earlier level.

(China Daily 05/12/2008 page10)