Chongqing - Southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality will continue to deepen the institutional reform in construction project approval, according to the Chongqing Municipal Commission of Housing and Rural-Urban Development on November 26, 2019, to improve the business environment. How to do it?  A total of 26 measures covering seven categories will be taken to deepen reforms, to strengthen areas of weakness on the one hand, and to work for innovation on the other hand.

Southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality will continue to deepen the institutional reform in construction project approval, according to the Chongqing Municipal Commission of Housing and Rural-Urban Development on November 26, 2019.

Improving areas of weakness

Chongqing will endeavor to improve areas of weakness form three aspects: unifying approval procedures, improving the management system, and bettering supervision ways.

As for the unified approval process, the project categories will be refined and approval items streamlined, regional assessment deepened and joint acceptance methods and procedures applied, and completion drawings and acceptance standards unified.

The effort to deepen reform is to focus on four aspects- the “one blueprint,” “one window,” “one form,” and “one set of mechanisms” in the pilot phase, all for improving the management system, for example, dealing with an application for a relevant construction project via "one window." The "one form" aims to streamline the application materials in avoidance of repeated submitting.

At the same time, supervision methods will be optimized using an in-depth supervision system, a joint disciplinary mechanism, better municipal public services, and the regulation of intermediary services.

Working for innovation

In terms of innovation measures, Chongqing has proposed a series of reform measures that are specific to the city situation and its characteristics. These measures include the establishment of “one dictionary," a collection of primary data for investment projects in the city, and "multiple reviews integrated as one involving construction land approval as well as urban and rural planning permits.

The pilot reform of the Chongqing construction project approval system will cut the duration for project approval by more than half. Specifically, time for general social investment projects has been reduced from 102 working days to 50, and general government investment projects from 203 working days to 70. Canceling the approval for the preliminary design will save the company about 50 days.