China's largest mobile operator China Mobile is to cut staff payments for five consecutive years starting from 2010, the National Business Daily reported today citing company insiders.

The report says the company's staff will see their payments decline by 10 percent each year, as required by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), which currently oversees 128 state-owned enterprises (SOEs) including China Mobile.

The payment cut already started in January, covering the China Mobile group to its branches across the country, company insiders told the paper. 

Before the current cost-cutting measure, the SASAC had asked China Mobile to lower employee payments in 2004 and 2007. All these cuts came after over-priced labor costs were exposed in a series of telecom reshuffles, industry analysts told the paper.

Following the country's latest telecom restructuring that ended at the end of 2009, China's original six telecom operators merged into the current China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom.

The SASAC did not confirm details of the latest plan to the paper.

The SASAC last year asked SOEs to lower costs and boost efficiency in the face of the financial crisis. It also conducted a survey on the payment of SOE employees last year.

source:chinadaily