Beijing May Move to Grab Slice Of State Firms' Dividend Payouts
SHANGHAI, China -- Robust corporate profits in the past two years have prompted a growing number of China's listed companies to reward shareholders with cash dividends.
But one big investor is missing out on the payments: the government. For more than a decade, China's government has forfeited its right as a shareholder in listed companies -- indeed, often the biggest shareholder -- to receive dividends, the portion of earnings paid out to investors.
Instead, dividends that might otherwise have boosted local and central government coffers are retained by state-run enterprises, which are free to use the money as they see fit. When earnings were dismal and companies stingy with dividends, that didn't matter much. Now, it does.
Some officials in the government, including at the country's central bank, are pushing for a rethink of the policy under which the state doesn't take its share of dividends. It remains unclear whether or when Beijing might change current practice.
But analysts say that if state shareholders begin to claim their rightful dividends, the biggest impact would be to clip corporate expansion. That wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, as big piles of retained earnings have made it easy for some state-controlled companies to expand whether it made sense or not. But if there's a policy change, minority shareholders could also find that those companies become less generous in distributing earnings.
At stake are often huge dividend payouts, like the 60.1 billion yuan ($7.5 billion) that Hong Kong-listed PetroChina said in March it plans to make on its 192.2 billion yuan in 2005 operating income. The oil giant's corporate parent, China National Petroleum Corp., will get most of the money because of its large stake -- about 80% -- in PetroChina. But the parent is ultimately owned by the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, the agency overseeing the country's key state companies that under existing policy will get none of the money.
Once overlooked in Chinese boardrooms, dividends are commonplace after regulators began pushing listed companies to enhance shareholder value. Payment of a cash dividend at least once in the past three years is a prerequisite for certain corporate fund raising, such as selling additional shares.
About 60% of listed companies paid a cash dividend on 2005 earnings, says Zhao Feng, a Shanghai fund manager at Bank of Communications Schroder Fund Management Co. He puts the market's average dividend yield at about 2.85% for companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges, and he estimates as much as 40% of last year's earnings were offered to shareholders in the form of dividends.
Technically, all shareholders get dividends. But since 1994, both central- and local-government shareholders have waived any claim to such funds as part of Beijing's effort to transform state-run enterprises into standalone business groups. State shareholders account for about two-thirds of the Chinese stock markets' total $445 billion capitalization, although traditionally those holdings haven't been allowed to be publicly traded. A program launched last May is making these shares publicly tradable, but it has done little to reduce the actual amount held by the state.
Despite not collecting dividends, China's government still has benefited from rising profits at listed companies. Corporate income taxes can be as high as 33%, although that rate night be lowered this year. Increasingly, some officials believe the intake from taxes isn't enough and that the government should get dividends, too.
The State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission ultimately owns many of the parent companies that receive the lion's share of corporate dividends. But the commission itself doesn't see any of these payouts -- a situation that has been highlighted by its chairman, Li Rongrong. He often describes his role as "an investor," and he has been a vocal proponent of dividend payments.
China's Ministry of Finance is another potential claimant to dividends because of the losses it has swallowed through its backing of state-owned enterprises. In 2005, it earmarked 21.9 billion yuan to support policy-based closures or bankruptcies of 116 state enterprises that laid off a total of 550,000 workers. The ministry said in its 2006 budget report that it plans to boost nontax revenue partly by going after income generated by state-owned assets.
The World Bank, in a report published in October, said the government could put corporate dividends to good use, if it could get them. Education and health spending could have been raised by 85% in 2004 if the government had access to just half of state-enterprise profit, the bank estimates. The current policy of retained earnings "seems to have an implicit assumption that there is no better use of (state-owned enterprise) profit other than reinvestment" back into the enterprises, the report said.
Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, argued in a speech late last year that smaller amounts of retained earnings at the corporate level might prompt company treasurers to consider market-based financing to fund expansion and may help develop China's capital markets. In addition, Mr. Zhou said, "I think owners have the right to receive dividends."
政府希望获得企业分红
过去两年来，越来越多实现丰厚利润的中国企业开始向股东回报以现金分红。
不过有一个大股东却被他们遗忘了，那就是：政府。十多年来，中国政府已放弃了其作为上市公司股东（而且通常都是大股东）之一应有的获得分红的权利。
地方和中央政府本来可以得到的这些能充实财政金库的资金却被国有企业留下了，它们会在自己认为需要的时候自由地动用这些钱。在以前企业利润微薄而且也吝于分红的时候这似乎不是什么问题。但现在不同了。
现在，一些政府官员、包括央行官员在敦促有关方面重新考虑政府不得享受分红的规定。现在还很不清楚中国政府是否及何时会修改现有规定。
不过分析师表示，如果政府开始要求得到应有的分红，其产生的最大影响将是阻碍企业的发展壮大。政府拿分红未必是什么坏事，因为国有企业可以拿著大量的节余资金进行扩张，无论这种扩张是否有意义。但如果政策发生了变化，中小股东就会感觉到企业在分红方面变得吝啬起来。
受到影响的是那些规模往往较为庞大的分红，比如在香港上市的中国石油(PetroChina)，该公司3月份表示，计划从2005年的人民币1,922亿元运营利润中拿出601亿元(合75亿美元)用于分红。
持有中国石油80%股份的母公司中国石油天然气集团(China National Petroleum Corp.)将拿下其中最大的一块蛋糕，不过该集团最后的上级是中国国有资产管理委员会(State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission)。国资委是中国主要国有企业的主管机构，根据现有政策，它不得享受分红。
分红一向被中国企业的董事会所忽视。在监管机构开始要求上市公司重视股东价值的政策背景下，分红逐渐成为常见做法。对某些想通过增发等方式筹集资金的上市公司来说，一个先决条件就是过去三年至少有一次现金分红。
交银施罗德基金管理有限公司(Bank of Communications Schroder Fund Management Co.)基金经理人赵枫说，有60%的上市公司对2005年的盈利进行了现金分红。据他的数据，上海和深圳交易所上市公司的平均股息收益率在2.85%，他还估计上市公司去年的盈利有40%被用于分红了。
从理论上来讲，所有股东都应拿到分红。但随著中国开始进行旨在加强企业经营自主权的国企改革，自1994年以来，中央和地方政府均取消了享受分红的权利。
在中国股市4,450亿美元的总市值中，政府持股的市值占到其中的三分之二，虽然他们的股份不能在公开市场流通。去年中国开始对这类股票进行全流通改革，不过迄今为止，改革并未使政府持股数量明显减少。
不过，虽然不能享受分红，但政府仍能因上市公司盈利增加而受益。中国的企业所得税税率高达33%，今年或许能下调。不过有越来越多的官员认为，仅有税收还不够，政府还应享受分红。
国资委虽然是许多国有母公司的实际“主人”，但它自己却不能拿一分钱分红，国资委主任李荣融曾多次提到这一点。他经常说国资委的身份是“投资者”，他一直积极鼓吹国资委应获得分红。
财政部是另一家可能要求获得分红的机构，这是因为它在支持国有企业改革的过程中承受了巨大损失。2005年，财政部拨出219亿元支持116家国有企业实施政策性停业或破产，在此过程中，这些企业共解雇了550,000名员工。财政部在2006年预算报告中说，计划通过获得国有资产产生的利润增加税收外收入。
世界银行(World Bank)在去年10月发表的一篇报告中说，中国政府如能取得企业分红，就有可能把他们用于急需的地方。如果2004年政府能获得企业利润的一半，那它用于教育和医疗的支出能增加85%。报告说，现行政策似乎暗含著这样一个假设，即企业的盈利除了用于对企业的再
投资之外似乎没有更好的去向。
中国央行行长周小川在去年底的一次讲话中表示的，减少企业利润留存或许能促使企业在为发展筹集资金时考虑市场化融资手段，这将有助于中国资本市场的发展。周小川还说，（企业）所有者有获得分红的权利。
