By Wang Shen
There are 29 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions starting to promote an opening-up initiative in the elderly care service market, as reported by the Economic Information Daily on Tuesday.
Twenty-six out of the 29 regions have clearly stated that their elderly care markets would open up to foreign investments.
Industry insiders believed that speeding up the opening up of the elderly care service market would not only cope with the accelerating ageing society but also promote the quality of domestic elderly care services.
According to a report by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), in 2017, the number of Chinese people aged 60 and above has exceeded 240 million, accounting for 17.3 percent of the total population.
By 2020, this number will increase to about 255 million, accounting for 17.8 percent of the total population. By the middle of this century, China is expected to enter the advanced ageing stage, and the elderly population will reach about 480 million.
Guan Bo, an associate researcher from the NDRC, stated that there is an apparent imbalance in the resource structure of elderly care services. Also, there is a marked mismatch between the service supply structure and the social expectations as well as the demand structure.
The related departments have conducted a number of seminars and meetings to come up with new policies for the elderly care service market to solve the problem of the imbalanced development in the elderly care service market,
The new strategies will focus on further simplifying administrative approval and documentation, encouraging private capital to enter the elderly care service market, providing diversified multi-level services, and fostering social forces to participate in the reform of public nursing institutions for senior citizens.
An expert pointed out that to solve the land use problem, it is possible to establish an open system of land resources for elderly care facilities. It is possible to set up special guidance funds to solve fund issues, and to adopt innovative financing methods, such as real estate securitisation, to release the financial pressure associated with elderly care issues.
The market is also optimistic about the public-private partnership (PPP) business model. Guan said that the PPP model could reduce the financial and operating costs of elderly care service development, and increase the utilization rate of idle land to help resolve the land problem.
