While mounting the fight against tax fraud, a good work should be done to push ahead normal export tax rebates to shore up the rapid growth of foreign trade, Zhu stressed at a meeting on combating tax fraud held Saturday, December 9, in Nanjing, capital city of east China's Jiangsu Province.

Officials from Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian provinces and Shanghai Municipality, in east China, reported the latest developments in the cracking down on tax fraud.

Zhu noted that the nationwide fight against tax fraud is an important task. He urged local governments to take as strong and quick action against tax-related crimes as they did against smuggling. The State Council will send special panels to inspect key areas.

Zhu said that governments at all levels and relevant departments must support law enforcement organizations to investigate individual cases no matter who is involved in. All localities should break local protectionism and unite to investigate and prosecute criminal activities.

Mass supervision and supervision by public opinion will be strengthened to help fight economic crimes. Investigations into several typical cases will be made public as a warning to others, he said.

Zhu said that construction of China's E-taxation system will be accelerated so as to practice an across-the-board supervision. The systems of anti-counterfeiting, certification, crosscheck, and check assistance will be put into operation during the first half of next year.

He said that China's foreign trade has maintained rapid growth since the campaign was initiated.

Total export volume for the January-October period this year reached US$205.1 billion, up 32.2 percent over the same period last year. The figure for the January-November period was US$227.2 billion, up 30.1 percent compared with the same period of last year.

Zhu noted that banks should provide loans to those enterprises with good records, but have been temporarily affected in working funds by the ongoing examination.

The premier emphasized that the crackdown on crimes involving export tax rebates is important for improving macro-control, warding off tax losses, promoting healthy development of the national economy, regulating the order of the socialist market economy, and punishing the corrupt.

(Xinhua 12/10/2000)