By Xinhua
Hangzhou : China has launched the country’s first market credit index in Yiwu, the country’s largest distribution centre for small commodities, in the eastern province of Zhejiang.
The Yiwu Market Credit Index (YMCI), launched Wednesday, has eight specific sub-indices: credit management, entrepreneur quality, business performance, financial credit, fair competition, commodity quality, intellectual property rights and consumer rights protection.
Jointly developed by the Zhejiang Provincial Administration for Industry and Commerce, Yiwu municipal government and China Credit Research Center with Beijing University, the YMCI is aimed at reflecting the development, changes and trends of the credit situation at the Yiwu market.
The index would be published monthly, covering 13 typical commodity categories, said Du Liqun, deputy director of the China Credit Research Center.
It took September 2007 as the base period — the basic points of YMCI and its sub-indices are designed at 100 — for its measurement and calculation. According to data and analysis, September usually sees a stable situation in market transactions with rational credit data, Du said.
The newly-released YMCI for the September-December period stood at 101.575 points on average, indicating a good situation in terms of credit levels at the market, with business performance and consumer rights protection indices fluctuating slightly with other indices steadily rising, Du said.
The Yiwu market, with more than 50,000 stalls, reported a trade volume of 3.48 billion yuan ($481.3 million) last year.
In October 2006, the Chinese government officially launched the country’s first small commodities index in Yiwu, covering 23 specific sub-indices in three main categories: price indices, market prosperity indices, and single monitoring and measuring indices.