The Ministry of Commerce carefully implemented the spirit of the 18th National Congress, the 3rd and the 4th Plenary Sessions of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and actively took measures to promote the development of the service industry for the lives of residents and satisfy and guarantee the increasing requirements of the masses for services for their lives.
I. Establish Rules and Regulations to Enable the Masses to Get Satisfactory Services
The Administrative Measures of the Catering Service (Trial) was issued. Specifications were defined and proposed for the concepts of food and beverage management, the management behaviors of enterprises, the requirementts for employees, the industrial management responsibilities, the roles of industry associations and the relevant legal liabilities. Regulations were set up for the problem of minimum consumption that had caused wide concern of the whole society for a long time and catering enterprises were clearly banned from setting up minimum consumption for consumers.
Housekeeping Contracts (Model for Staffs, Model for Agencies and Dispatched Models) were issued. The responsibilities, rights and obligations were defined for housekeeping organizations, housekeeping personnel and consumers in the country, which not only guaranteed the standard operational capacities and levels of the service suppliers, but also made sure that the consumption of services was safe and reliable and would be of great importance in promoting the normalization, health and sustainable development of the home service industry.
II. Promote the Transformation of the Catering Industry in a Popular Style to Enable the Masses to Get Affordable Services
The Guidance on Accelerating Developing Mass Catering by the Ministry of Commerce was issued to fully construct a mass catering service system. The instructions of leaders of the State Council have been implemented and carried out and efforts have been made to work with relevant departments to launch the pilot work of optimizing the environment and promoting the transformation and development of the catering industry and reduce unreasonable burdens on enterprises, guide local commercial departments and guilds, and promote the transformation the development of the catering industry with many measures. At present, the catering enterprises have been unified in thinking, practically changed the development thoughts and modes and fully recognized that mass catering is the mainstream of the industry. The flourishing development of mass catering vigorously aroused domestic demands. In January-November 2014, the income of national catering totaled 2.51326 trillion yuan, with an increase of 9.7% on a year-on-year basis. Mass catering accounted for 80% of the whole national catering market. Some of the mass catering brands closely following the market won highly recognition of the market with rapid development and outstanding achievements. Meanwhile, high-end catering actively explored and created a batch of fruitful transformation models in the process of transformation.
III. Innovate Housekeeping and Old-age Care Development to Enable the Masses to Get Needed Services
To cope with the prominent contradictions and problems in the domestic service industry, the Ministry of Commerce proposed policy measures to promote the development of the industry in 2014. The Opinions on Promoting Sound Development of Domestic Trade Circulation by the General Office of the State Council (No.51 [2014] issued by the General Office of the State Council) explicitly requires efforts to increase input in service facilities for residents, optimize commercial networks of communities, and planning, layout and the distribution of public service facilities, and encourage the building of community service centers integrating such popular service networks and stations as catering, supermarkets, health, old-age care and nursing to a whole. Efforts should be made to integrate various social resources, build public housekeeping network centers and supply bases of service staffs, cultivate a batch of staff-housekeeping enterprises, perfect the personnel training system of housekeeping taking care of the old and protecting the young, expand the supplies of housekeeping, accelerate the changing pace of the life service industry, reasonably set the tax rate of added-value tax of life service, increase policy support for the added-value tax and business tax of small and micro businesses, further promote the development of small and micro businesses in the life service industry and implement the policy of the area of business and comprehensive service facilities accounting for no less than 10% of the overall floorage of newly-built communities. The introduction of these policy measures has created a sound policy environment for the development of the housekeeping industry.
Industrialization of old-age service was experimented. In 2014, the Ministry of Commerce, together with the Ministry of Finance, issued the Notification on Carrying out Pilot Industrialization of Old-Age Service in a Market-Oriented Way, and decided to choose eight provinces and autonomous regions including Jilin, Shandong, Gansu, Anhui and Inner Mongolia as pilots from 2014, where funds are set up jointly by the central government, local governments, banks and enterprises to develop such service forms as home-based care for the aged, taking care of the aged in a collective way and community comprehensive services, and an old-aged care service industry facing the masses according to the mode of market-oriented operation, and promote the industrialization of old-aged care service. In order to accelerate the development of the old-aged service industry in a market-oriented way, the Ministry of Commerce also issued the Guidance on Promoting the Development of the Old-Aged Service Industry, asked for accelerating the diversified development of home old-aged service, the facilitation of community old-aged service and the characteristic development of old-aged service in a collective way, guided other regions to actively carry out work and explored new methods and modes of developing old-aged service in a market-oriented way.
IV. Quality Service Activities were initiated to Enable the Masses to Get Satisfied Service
In order to promote the transformation and upgrading of the commercial service industry and improve service quality, the Ministry of Commerce issued the Notification on Carrying out 2014 Quality Service Activities of the Commercial Service Industry in 2014, joined hands with the China General Chamber of Commerce to continue launching quality service activities, focused on the theme of “Leaning from the Advanced” and implemented a series of activities with the results of standardized service, the integrity of management, energy conservation, emission reduction and green environmental protection, convenience for residents, the professionalization of service and the satisfaction of consumers. Since this year, efforts have been made to advocate quality service and doing good job in such eight service industries as catering, accommodation, housekeeping, appliance repair service, photography, hairdressing and beauty, bath and washing and dyeing, strengthen the capability of quality service through improving service skills, improve the sense of honor and professional quality of employees of commercial businesses by creating a sound atmosphere of creating excellence and improve service quality and level by guiding commercial service industries to enhance service awareness.
