Local government officials yesterday announced reorganization plans for Shanghai, creating 45 government bodies after merging and removing some agencies.

Shanghai also restructured its government in 1995 and 2000, which has helped improve efficiency and boost economic and social development, city officials said.

The latest government reshuffle is aimed at transforming government functions and forming a fair, transparent and highly efficient administration system, according to a government meeting held yesterday.

Shanghai Party Secretary Chen Liangyu said at the meeting that the restructure of government bodies will help strengthen the government's ability in planning local economy and managing social affairs.

"Key point of the reform is to transform the government's function and remove the previous overlap of responsibilities among various departments," said Chen. "We should unify similar responsibilities, which was formerly scattered, thus to raise working efficiency."

He also pointed out that Shanghai will continue with its reform of state-owned assets, which will separate the government bodies from its affiliated companies.

Some of the newly established government bodies are:

State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission will manage the city's state-owned assets on behalf of the local government and will be directly under the control of the government.

The former Shanghai Municipal Development and Planning Commission is transformed into Shanghai Development and Reform Commission after taking over the local Economic System Reform Office, which was previously sharing similar responsibilities.

The new body will also handle issues like economic planning and project approvals, which were previously under the Shanghai Economic Commission and Shanghai Commercial Commission.

A new government body will be established by merging the Shanghai Economic Commission and Shanghai Commercial Commission to oversee the industrial and commercial operations in the city.

However, the Shanghai Foreign Economic Relations and Trade Commission will be retained to oversee the city's introduction of overseas investment and developing export-oriented economy.

In addition to keeping its responsibility of supervising pharmaceuticals and medicines, the Shanghai Drug Administration will cover issues in more fields, including food, health-care products and cosmetics. It will be renamed the Shanghai Food and Drug Administration.

The city government office of information technology development is upgraded to a committee headed by Mayor Han Zheng.

(eastday.com August 2, 2003)