The fifth full session of the Tenth National People's Congress (NPC) of China will convene on March 5 next year.

The decision was made by members of the Tenth NPC Standing Committee on Friday before the close of the 25th session of the NPC Standing Committee.

The NPC Standing Committee members also adopted resolutions on Friday to submit the drafts of the corporate tax law and property law to the fifth full session of the national legislature for deliberation.

The draft of corporate tax law sets a unified income tax rate for domestic and foreign companies at 25 percent after years of criticism that the tax policies are unfair to domestic companies.

Chinese companies currently pay income tax at a rate of 33 percent, while their foreign counterparts, which benefit from tax waivers and incentives, pay an average of 15 percent.

There are 159 countries and regions that levy corporate income tax at an average 28.6 percent.

"If the corporate income tax law is adopted next March, the earliest date for the law coming into force will be Jan. 1, 2008,"said Shi Yaobin, an official of taxation department under the Ministry of Finance.

China's top legislator Wu Bangguo on Friday said the corporate tax law was important to economic and social development. Since 2005, 16 motions had been raised by 541 NPC deputies on a corporate tax law.

"Lawmakers unanimously held that unifying tax rates was urgently needed to improve China's socialist market economic system and was conducive to creating fair competition," said Wu.

China's draft property law, a sweeping bill designed to protect both public and private ownership, has undergone more reviews than any other bill by the NPC Standing Committee, China's top legislature.

The draft law, after its seventh reading, was described as "on the correct political direction" and representing China's basic economic system.

Yao Hong, a senior official with the Legislative Affairs Committee under the NPC Standing Committee, said, "The draft property law is completely in line with the stipulations in China's constitution."

The Standing Committee also proposed other agenda items for the NPC annual session, including discussion of the government work report, discussing and approving a report on the implementation of the national economic and social development plan for 2006 and the national economic and social development program for 2007.

Other items include examining and approving reports on the implementation of the central and local budgets for 2006 and on the draft central and local budgets for 2007, and deliberating work reports of the NPC Standing Committee, the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate.

The agenda of the full session includes discussing the draft resolution on deputy quotas and election issues of the 11th NPC, as well as discussing the draft methods of electing 11th NPC deputies in Hong Kong and Macao.

(Xinhua News Agency December 30, 2006)