Samsung, Panasonic, Nokia and other leading foreign brands were on the list of Chinese subsidized household appliance project for farmers in the country's vast rural areas.

According to the bidding result announced by the China National Electronics Import and Export Corp. over the weekend, 155 domestic and foreign companies participated in the bidding for colour TV sets, refrigerators, mobile phones, washing machines and ice boxes.

Some 122 won the bid for the five types.

Panasonic, Midea, TCL and other 33 brands were on the washing machine list, with Samsung, Nokia, Motorola and other 14 brands getting a share of the big mobile phone market in the rural regions.

Ten domestic leading manufacturers including Hisense, Konka and Haier were on the colour TV sets list, while Meiling, Haier, Siemens and other 37 brands on the refrigerators list. Another 19 companies won the bid for ice boxes.

Chinese government promised to grant a 13 percent subsidy for household appliances for farmers' on purchase of these household appliances to improve 900 million rural residents' living standards and boost domestic consumption.

The government expanded the experiment of the subsidy policy to nine more provinces from the initial three provinces of eastern Shandong, central Henan and southwestern Sichuan which kicked off the pilot program in December 2007.

The new areas included Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Heilongjiang, Hubei and Shanxi, among others.

China's State Council (Cabinet) passed a string of policies to support the development of the country's light industry on Wednesday. One of them is to expand the practice of offering subsidies to rural households on purchasing electrical appliances.

(Xinhua News Agency November 23, 2008)