Chapter 1492 The tip of the iceberg by the Daming Lake

Lu City is known as a spring city, but unfortunately, today, the grand scenery of all springs surging in the past is no longer there, and many springs have dried up.

The world-famous Daming Lake is located in the northeast of the center of Lu City. It is a natural lake. There is no legendary Xia Yuhe on the shore of Daming Lake in Lu City, only tourists coming and going.

In mid-April, the temperature in Lu City rebounded, which is a good time for spring to bloom. Compared with the dryness of Yan City, the air has a slightly damp atmosphere because it is close to the sea. To be fair, the spring in Lu City is still relatively pleasant.

Among the bustling crowds, two tourists were not eye-catching. The old man was in his 50s and was very strong, with straight waists and steady steps, but his brows were frowning.

The young man is about 35 years old and wears a simple casual outfit, neither fat nor thin. He is determined every step he takes. Compared with the solemn face of the old man, his expression seems much more relaxed. He seems to be very safe and just treats it as a relaxation and a trip.

When I walked to a wooden chair, Xia Xiang sat down with Li Dingshan. After walking all the way, I was indeed a little tired.

The scenery of Daming Lake is pretty good, but like all famous attractions, it is crowded, which makes people lose the charm of enjoying the scenery. Fortunately, it is evening now, and there are fewer tourists, and the surroundings are starting to be quieter.

More than half a day has passed since the storm of the Standing Committee, and the provincial party committee has returned to peace. No matter how fierce the quarrels are at the meeting, there will be no news leaking outside the meeting. The rules in the officialdom are to close the door and quarrel, go out on camera, and news on TV and newspapers will always be peaceful and full of flowers.

Li Dingshan is still angry until now. When talking about Chen Qiudong's character, he almost gritted his teeth.

"Who did Governor Li listen to the matter about Chen Qiudong?" Xia Xiang walked with Li Dingshan for about half an hour and didn't say much. He wanted Li Dingshan to relieve his anger and nervousness.

Only when you are calm can you look at the problem calmly and rationally, so it is not until now that you ask Chen Qiudong's questions.

"Although I only came half a month earlier than you, a lot of things happened in half a month." Li Dingshan reached out to his back and knocked on his back. "And before I came to Qisheng, I had already discovered many problems when I was in the Ministry of Commerce..."

...Li Dingshan, as the deputy governor of the Standing Committee, has many stalls in charge, including the Salt Affairs Bureau. As soon as he arrived in Qi Province, Lu Chengliang, deputy director of the Salt Affairs Bureau, took the initiative to find him, reported to him, and expressed his active approach.

In theory, at the level of deputy director of the Provincial Salt Affairs Bureau, he was not qualified to report his work directly to the Standing Committee and Vice Governor, but Lu Chengliang was different, and he knew Li Dingshan.

Lu Chengliang was also a native of Qi Province. During his tenure as Vice Minister of Commerce at Li Dingshan, Lu Chengliang went to the Ministry of Commerce in Beijing many times and met Li Dingshan after a while.

Lu Chengliang is generous and upright, and very consistent with Li Dingshan's temper. Although the two have a big difference in rank, they gradually become friends because of their common language.

Lu Chengliang, 45, is not young anymore and is a veteran in the officialdom, but his years of experience as an official has not changed his honest temper. On the contrary, the officialdom's big dye vat did not dye him black, but instead made him more and more hate him.

It is precisely because of Lu Chengliang's unsociable side that Li Dingshan's love for talents was decided to nominate him as deputy director of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.

The nomination of Lu Chengliang as deputy director of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission was not for the purpose of improving the level, but for verifying some illegal facts from the Salt Affairs Bureau reflected by Lu Chengliang that made Li Dingshan angry.

The Salt Affairs Bureau is a direct agency of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission. If Lu Chengliang successfully serves as deputy director, he can directly intervene in the shocking shady internal situation of the Salt Affairs Bureau from top to bottom.

As early as when Li Dingshan was the deputy minister of the Ministry of Commerce, he noticed a strange phenomenon. Yan Province, which is also a salt-producing province, the salt sold in various prefectures and cities is not produced in Yan Province, but in Qi Province or Ontario.

At first, Li Dingshan did not realize the huge inside story hidden in it. Although he is the vice minister of the Ministry of Commerce, he usually doesn’t care much about oil, salt, sauce and vinegar. Salt is an industry controlled by the state. It is neither smuggled nor faked. Moreover, a bag of salt costs only one yuan, how much profit can it be?

Who would be petty about small matters of one dollar?

But later Li Dingshan found out that he was wrong, because although the price of salt did not directly increase, it changed from 500 grams per yuan to 400 grams, which was equivalent to the price increase in disguise to 1.25 yuan and 500 grams!

Later, when the Ministry of Commerce came into contact with the amount of edible salt allocated in Yan Province, Li Dingshan suddenly realized that bullying the people did not care about one or two cents. Yan Province allocated 400,000 tons of salt every year in the national plan - the actual sales volume was much more than the plan, and the specific amount was the industry secret. The Salt Affairs Bureau would not disclose it because of the stake. After a preliminary calculation, one or two cents more than one pound of salt increased, which is equivalent to plundering more than 80 million yuan from the people every year!

However, this is the tip of the iceberg.

The country has always been very strict in controlling salt, and it seems that there has never been a phenomenon of private salt. The agency that controls salt smuggling is the Salt Bureau. Perhaps in the eyes of many people, the Tax Bureau, the Industrial and Commercial Bureau and other bureaus are good places with abundant oil and water. In fact, it is not the Salt Bureau that is truly rich but not famous.

Food is the most important thing for people, and salt is the first priority for food. The Salt Affairs Bureau, which controls the taste of the people, is really a place to collect money, stamp it and charge it, and the profit is so rich that it is incredible.

Calculated at 1 yuan per bag of 400 grams of salt, the price per ton is about 2,500 yuan. However, the ex-factory price of a salt drying farm that is truly at the lowest level shall not exceed 500 yuan per ton. Please note that the state also stipulates that after the Salt Affairs Bureau - to be precise, it is a salt company and a state-owned enterprise under the Salt Affairs Bureau - after the retail price shall not exceed 1,020 yuan per ton after the Salt Affairs Bureau is packaged.

How much technical content does the salt company have? How much does it cost? To be honest, it is just to disassemble the 50 kilograms of large bags and divide them into 400 grams of small bags. At the same time, about 20 yuan of iodine is added per ton. The cost of the divided bag is 300 yuan per ton. That is to say, after each ton of salt is handled by the salt company, the cost has increased by less than 350 yuan.

Based on the ex-factory price of 500 tons, plus the intermediate cost of 350 yuan, if the salt company calculates based on the national regulations of 1,020 yuan per ton, the profit will be around 170 yuan per ton. Based on the annual planned 400,000 tons of consumption in Yan Province, the annual profit of the salt company is more than 30 million.

It seems that the profit is not much, but it should be clear that the salt company has no risks because it is a franchise, or rather, because it is a second-hand dealer, and does not require any investment.

But another bloody fact is that the purchase price of the salt company is not qualitative, because all salt must be stamped by the Salt Bureau to be not considered private salt. When it is sold to the market, it does not follow the price specified by the state, but has significantly increased the price to more than 2,500 yuan per ton, or even more.

In this way, the profit of the salt company soared from about 170 yuan per ton to 1,650 yuan per ton, and the profit also changed from 30 million to 660 million!

Compared with salt franchise, all profit-making industries in the world can only sigh and cannot catch up with them.

If the above facts are just the ones, it is not enough to make Li Dingshan angry and furious. After all, it is a national policy and no one can do anything about it. However, after Li Dingshan studied the relevant data, he found a more infuriating fact. Yan Province's annual allocation plan is about 400,000 tons. As a high-quality salt-producing province, the salt fields along the Bohai Sea can fully meet the province's salt use needs, but Yan Province has to allocate more than 200,000 tons of salt from Qi and Ontario every year.

As a result, the salt fields in Yan Province were abandoned, and the workers in Yan Province could not even obtain basic living security, were heavily in debt, the machines were idle, and rusty. The more infuriating fact is that it is not that the quality of salt in Yan Province was not good, but that there is another inside story.

Yan Province is a famous salt-producing province and the second largest salt-producing area in the country. However, most of the salt in Yan Province market comes from Qi and Ontario. Although it is also packaged by Zhongyan Province and is considered to be a formal salt channel, it has not been possible to adjust salt from other provinces without completing the provincial allocation plan, which is actually no different from private salt.

It's just doing illegal things under a legal appearance.

Why would he rather let the salt fields in Yan Province be abandoned than take care of the salt fields in this province and have to be allocated from other provinces? It’s okay that Qi Province is also sea salt, while Ontario’s salt is mostly well salt and mineral salt, which may not meet the tastes of the people in Yan Province.

After Li Dingshan discovered the problem, he conducted in-depth investigations and visited major supermarkets in Yan City. He found that as expected, almost none of the bagged salt sold in supermarkets came from Yan Province, and almost all of them came from Qi and Ontario.

Li Dingshan even visited the salt-producing land in Yan Province. A shocking fact is that large areas of salt fields are deserted, and many workers in the salt fields are unemployed, and they don’t even have a few hundred yuan in living expenses a month.

In sharp contrast, Yan Provincial Salt Bureau is still not satisfied with the profits earned by more than 600 million yuan every year, including the salt companies under its jurisdiction. Not only are middle-level and above cadres annually earning hundreds of thousands or even millions of yuan, but the benefits are so good that each person is not allowed to pay a villa.

Just when Li Dingshan learned about the inside story of the salt industry, but he was suffering from lack of real power and could not interfere in Yan Province's affairs or inquire about Qi or Ontario's affairs, a transfer order transferred him to Qi and take office.

It was precisely the deputy governor responsible for contacting the salt service system, and Lu Chengliang, deputy director of the Salt Service Bureau of Chachaqi, came to approach. Li Dingshan talked about this matter with Lu Chengliang during the conversation, and Lu Chengliang told him more facts behind the scenes.

The more he knew the inside story, the more shocked Li Dingshan was, the more angry he was. He decided to take action on the shady scenes of the Salt Industry. Although he also knew that since the Salt Industry was a national specialist, there was a huge backstage support behind the scenes, and he could not move the fundamentals. At least he could give the people justice within his ability.

Not only the people in Yan province, but also the people in Qi province.
Chapter completed!