Northwest China's Shaanxi province recently enacted a series of measures to reduce burdens on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and help them tide over difficulties during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Special funds will be given to SMEs in the province that are temporarily facing difficulties in production and operation but have marketable products, promising projects, and competitive technologies, as well as those SMEs in the field of people's livelihood, to reduce the burdens of house rent, water bills, and electricity bills.

Rent reductions and exemptions will be offered for SMEs that have been greatly affected by the pandemic.

For micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises in Shaanxi that lease State-owned assets for business use, rent will be waived in January 2022.

A one-time subsidy of 100,000 yuan (157,624.36) will be given to county-level industrial concentration areas, small and micro enterprise entrepreneurship and innovation bases, and SME innovation and entrepreneurship carriers which have given SMEs rents, standardized factory rents, and property fee reductions during the pandemic period.

Shaanxi will encourage government financing guarantee institutions to develop batch guarantee products, and guide more financial resources to support the development of small and micro enterprises and science and technology innovation enterprises.

Value-added tax will be exempted for small-scale taxpayers with monthly sales of less than 150,000 yuan. Micro, small, and medium enterprises in the manufacturing industry can postpone the payment of some taxes and fees in the fourth quarter of 2021.

The province will strengthen the construction of the Shaanxi financial service cloud platform to improve the convenience of loans of SMEs.

In addition, Shaanxi will improve the product competitiveness of SMEs in the province transported by China-Europe freight train by reducing the detention time of goods at border ports and the cost of customs clearance for enterprises.