A special fund for the research and development of integrate circuits is being established to help facilitate the growth of domestic electronic information companies, vice minister Lou Qinjian of Information Industry said Friday at a press conference.

Giving no specific amount of the special fund, Lou cited it as part of a package of incentives aiming to cultivate heavy-weight indigenous electronic players able to compete in the world arena.

"To become an electronic power, China must have its own conglomerates in the electronic information sector, " said Lou in Nanchang, capital of east China's Jiangxi Province.

Apart from the special fund, China also planned to grant export tax rebates to more than 40 electronic products and constitute comprehensive policies to optimize the business environment for the electronic information industry, he said.

Large electronic information companies will have more leeway in managing their foreign exchange income and are encouraged to tap the overseas market, he added.

Calling conglomerates "a major impetus to the take-off of the electronic information industry", Lou said that the government would encourage large domestic companies to beef up their technical innovation capabilities so that they could play an active role in industrial restructuring.

Statistics from the Ministry of Information Industry showed that the Qingdao-based Haier Group has been listed as the largest domestic electronic information company with a sales volume of 101. 6 billion yuan (about 12.28 billion US dollars) in 2004. By 2008, its total sales volume is projected to exceed 150 billion yuan ( about 18.14 billion US dollars).

Source: Xinhua