More action should be taken to cut excessive "monopoly welfare," says a commentary in Workers' Daily. An excerpt follows:

 

According to the newly approved resource conservation regulation of Anhui Province, resource enterprises and their employees can no longer enjoy a "free lunch" of resource products.

 

The regulation rules that resource enterprises should not provide free or discounted resource products to their employees. It also forbids the collection of a fixed monthly charge on the use of resource products.

 

Employees of the power industry can use electricity for free, staff of gas companies can buy cheap gas, public transport employees can take the bus without paying it is a common phenomenon in China's monopoly industries that employees can enjoy free or discounted products.

 

The public is critical of such "monopoly welfare." It also became a target for criticism during this year's sessions of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. Thus Anhui Province's legal action against such practices is worthy of applause.

 

Because of their special status, monopoly industries collect fees from the public through non-market means and turn part of this money into welfare for their own employees. Such welfare does not come from profit gained through market competition, but from the administrative monopoly.

 

Recently some monopoly industries asked to increase the prices of their resource products because they had suffered a huge loss. Yet the reasons they cited for the loss were all external ones. They deliberately ignored the internal factor of unduly high welfare. It is impractical to expect monopoly industries to rectify or ban monopoly welfare under their own steam. Thus legal action to end such monopoly welfare should be embraced.

 

It will contribute to changing the phenomenon of some members of society invading the welfare of others, urging monopoly industries to reduce costs and put off their impulse to raise the prices of their products.

 

But this is still a provincial regulation. Monopoly enterprises in other regions will not stop their practice of "monopoly welfare." Thus more efforts should be made. And institutional reform on administrative monopoly should be carried out to fully solve the problem.

 

(China Daily April 28, 2006)