Xiamen's finance bureau released a notice clarifying how the government is optimizing its purchasing and procurement policies, especially for small and medium-sized businesses from June this year. The notice aims at promoting fair competition, and improving transparency and efficiency in the government procurement process.

Special attention has been paid to small and medium-sized enterprises to enable them to bid side-by-side with larger companies for government procurement projects with less restrictive financial pressure

The bureau said in order to promote greater transparency and fair competition, standardized government procurement requirements have been put in place, as well as technical requirements, prohibitive clauses and review methods.

Special attention has been paid to small and medium-sized enterprises to enable them to bid side-by-side with larger companies for government procurement projects with less restrictive financial pressure. These include exemption from some deposits and non-cash means of guarantee.

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In addition to reducing business burden related to government purchases, Xiamen Customs has been playing its part in ensuring that trade remains smooth and efficient amid the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Customs officials have been working hard to ensure that clearance for goods coming in and going out of the city remain on track. Xiamen ranks 10th in China in terms of the speed of its customs clearance, and third compared with the country's coastal ports.

During the peak of China's epidemic prevention and control period, Xiamen Customs opened a green channel, adopting a "register before declaration" rapid inspection process, and a "zero delay" channel related to customs clearance for all epidemic prevention materials and equipment.

One beneficiary of Xiamen Customs' speedy action was Tianma Microelectronics, a high-tech enterprise producing displays that are used in terminals in medical equipment, smartphones and notebook computers.

The company is one of the world's largest exporters of displays used in medical equipment, and at the time was experienced a peak in global demand.

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With output of one of the company's major production bases in Wuhan crippled due to the outbreak, it fell to the Xiamen branch of the company to pick up the slack and offer assistance in terms of both upstream and downstream production.

While only 30 percent of production had resumed at Tianma in Wuhan, in Xiamen over 90 percent of the workforce had returned with more than 18,000 employees on duty. Due to these efforts, and the speedy efforts of Xiamen Customs, orders from Tianma's customers were fulfilled.