Nearly 700,000 privately owned enterprises were established in 2006 on the back of a new corporation law that came into effect at the beginning of last year which reduced the minimum capital required to set up a company.

The number of new privately owned enterprises reached 680,000, an increase of 15.8 percent, raising the total to 4,981,000 by the end of 2006, according to statistics published on Monday by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce.

The registered capital of the privately owned enterprises was up nearly 24 percent to 7.6 trillion yuan (US$987 billion). The number of companies with a registered capital of over one million yuan was 1.19 million, 270,000 more than in the previous year.

Other measures adopted by the corporate law included cutting the minimum capital requirement of companies with limited liabilities to 30,000 yuan, allowing investors to contribute their capital in more than two stages and allowing the establishment of one-person companies.

(Xinhua News Agency April 24, 2007)