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Updated July 31, 2004
China is planning to spin off tourism business from state-owned enterprises and transfer the assets to the country's top travel agencies -- China International Travel Service (CITS) and China Travel Service Group (CTS) -- the Beijing Times reported, without citing sources.
The newspaper said the State-owned Asset Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) is studying the feasibility of splitting travel agencies, hotels and restaurants from the 187 SASAC-owned major state owned enterprises and transferring them to either CITS or CTS, two leading travel agencies in the country.
The move will improve the competitiveness of the two travel agencies and allow them to better compete with foreign-funded travel agencies as the tourism sector opens to overseas firms, the report said.
Officials at SASAC and CITS could not be contacted for comment. A China Travel Service official declined to comment.
The newspaper said combined tourism assets of these SOEs could be as high as tens of billions of yuan.
The central government, in a move to consolidate big SOEs and improve their competitiveness, has been trying to spin off non-core businesses of various SOEs.
Earlier this month, SASAC issued a document urging SOEs whose core businesses are not the real estate to offload property development divisions to five state-owned property developers.
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