The Ministry of Information Industry (MII) is working on a series of regulations and policies to help the country's information and telecom industry grow stronger and foster fair competition, said an official Thursday in Beijing.

"We should grasp every opportunity to promote the transformation of China from a big telecom market to a telecom power, and regulations and policies should help that change," said Jiang Yaoping, director-general of the department of policy and regulations under the Ministry of Information Industry (MII).

He said yesterday at the 2004 China Telecommunications Market Forum organized by the domestic research firm CCID Consulting that his department will speed up the drafting of China's telecom law and submit it to the State Council for review as early as the end of the month.

The law, which has been in the works for 24 years, is expected to strengthen regulations in the telecom market, break the monopoly, deal with provisions for universal telecom services, and aid the convergence of telecom, broadcasting and Internet networks.

Jiang said the MII will also help the People's Supreme Court launch a legal interpretation on the punishment for violations of interpretability between telecom operators.

The MII warned last year that serious violations of interpretability would be subject to criminal charges, but it still needs a formal interpretation to put that into practice.

Jiang said yesterday that the MII also began to formulate an outline for preferential policies on developing priority industries and products and encouraging information technology applications.

"It will have a significant impact on the healthy development of the information sector in the next five to 10 years," said Jiang.

Zhao Bo, deputy director-general of the department of electronic product management under the MII, predicted at the meeting that China's telecom industry will grow 11.7 percent over the previous year with revenues of 575 billion yuan (US$69 billion), including 519 billion yuan (US$62 billion) from telecom services.

Capital expenditure in the industry is expected to be around 210 billion yuan (US$25.36 billion), slightly lower than last year's 222 billion yuan (US$26.81 billion).

(China Daily March 12, 2004)