Research On Public Utilities Franchising Legal Issues

Public utilities franchising system as a new public-private cooperation mode of operation refers to the government departments granting the franchisors the utility operation rights to provide products and service to the public in a certain period and fields in accordance with the laws and regulations. It is an important way of innovating the public utility privatization. Since the 21st century, our country’s public utility privatization reform has been in full swing, the government and all walks of life from the society have attached great attention to it, which shows the important place and value of the franchising system in the socialist market economy. The central and local government have issued many regulations to norm the operation of the system.Especially in 2015,the National Development and Reform Commission issued Measures for the Management of Infrastructure and Public Utilities Franchise which has pushed the public utility privatization reform of franchising to a new height. Utilities franchising has obtained the good social effect in practice. The development of public utilities franchising system effectively reduce the financial pressure of government departments, the introduction of competition in the market has broken the monopoly of the utilities industry, has improved the utility of economic efficiency, has increased the social welfare, and has greatly promoted the prosperity of the socialist market economy.However, at the same time, the public utilities franchising system has a series of problems during its operation,which should not be ignored. Our country’s public utilities franchising system is in the exploration and discovery stage,there are some lack in the legislation and theoretical research aspects. This thesis analyses many legal problems from the utility legislation level, such as the defection of the existing laws and regulations, and the lack of unified public utilities franchising legislation; Current regulations are low in legal efficiency. The lack of coordination mechanism among current rules leads to the conflict between the management authority. The broad and fuzzy current rules results in unpractical operability; and the faultiness of the disputation resolving and responsibility mechanism in current legislation etc.. The impeccable legal system is a powerful guarantee for the well work of the operation of public utilities franchising system. Through analyzing the basic development situation of the public utilities franchising system, this thesis states some existent problems. And then the author proposes some feasible suggestions based on the practical situations in our country, in order to provide references for our country public utilities franchising legislation, so as to promote the well operation of the franchising system in our country.