Grain merchants in Zhili Fourth Road, and even grain merchants in other areas, are paying close attention to the actions of Zhili Grain Company.
Because at first they thought it was just an ordinary grain company invested and established by the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises, but they did not expect that from the very beginning, grain was collected and sold at a fixed price, and the price remained unchanged.
After the first few days, the price of grain in Zhili remained unchanged, which they found a little strange.
Half a month later, Zhili Grain Company continued to purchase and sell at the original price, which made them unable to sit still.
Even a month has passed, and it is almost the Spring Festival, but the price of food has not changed at all. The Zhili Grain Company is like a bottomless pit, devouring a large amount of food at a price slightly higher than the market price, and transporting it to areas that are in urgent need of food. , sold at a high price lower than the local price, stabilizing local food prices and making a small profit at the same time.
Zhili Grain Company's pricing purchase and sales measures have made many grain merchants feel helpless!
what to do?
Find connections, win over officials to talk about impeachment, say that officials in the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises don't do anything, just to come out and steal business from them?
Or is it that grain companies are driving up grain prices, causing great harm to the people of Jiangnan?
Or should we talk about it, raise funds or something, and fight with this Zhili Grain Company?
But these are meaningless, because so long has passed. Businessmen with a little background know that this Zhili Grain Merchant Company was established under the personal instruction of the Emperor Sheng, with a large number of ministers, ministers and other cabinet bosses at the top. They are all watching in person.
If he causes trouble, he will be charged with endangering national security and arrested in a matter of minutes.
They can't do anything, but they have to do business. If they don't receive enough grain now, they won't have any grain to sell during the peak grain sales season after spring next year.
In the end, these grain merchants had only one idea left.
The higher the price, the higher it is. Anyway, it is only a few percentage points. Although the profit is less, there is still profit.
As a result, half a month after the Zhili Grain Company officially collected the grain, grain merchants in the Zhili area also followed suit and slightly increased the grain purchase price.
Originally they were worried that after they raised the price, Zhili Grain Company would further increase the purchase price, but they found that Zhili Grain Company was very authentic. The purchase price on the first day was this, and now it is this, and it was revealed. Rumor has it that the price will be the same this year, and it won’t change to death!
Since your price has not moved, everyone can have fun again. Therefore, in just one month, the overall purchase price of grain in the entire Zhili Sidao area has increased by about 3%. Price remains flat.
The change is not huge, but this result is quite shocking to Zhili Grain Company and even to many cabinet bosses who are concerned about this time.
Because this is a very successful example of maintaining food price security!
This also means that the example of Zhili Grain Company can be implemented in other provinces.
As a result, in the eighth year of Xuanping's reign, the Datang Grain Corporation was officially established. At the same time, it established the Zhili Grain Company and other provincial grain companies. Overnight, all the grain merchants in the world felt the influence of the imperial court. of deep malice!
Eight years after the arrival of Xuanping, the big shots in the imperial court were busy starting the work plan for the second year. The military was still busy with the Liaodong war, and the provincial grain companies under the Datang Grain Corporation also started their own actions.
The purchase of grain is opened at a fixed price, and the sale of grain is opened at a fixed price!
Of course, this price will neither be too high nor too low, and is often slightly adjusted based on local grain prices.
Because the purpose of Datang Grain Corporation is not to make money, nor to suppress other grain merchants, but to maintain the stability of grain prices. Whether grain prices plummet or rise sharply, they are unwilling to see it.
Arrived.
They need grain prices to stay within a stable range. They don't care about a few normal fluctuations, but they have to control severe price fluctuations.
Basically, today's Datang Grain Corporation has set out a price range, so that grain merchants can only play within this price range. They will definitely make money, and to be honest, the profits are quite a lot, but if they want to be as good as in the past
In that way, it would be impossible to take advantage of various grain harvest seasons or natural or man-made disasters to deliberately lower grain prices or raise grain prices to make huge profits.
After the Spring Festival in the eighth year of Xuanping, when the Lantern Festival was approaching, Li Xuan, the Holy Emperor, received a cabinet report on food. The report stated that in the past two months, food prices in the four areas of Zhili had basically remained stable. Overall, the price on the market
The price of purchased grain has increased slightly compared with last autumn, but the increase is not significant.
The retail price of grain on the market is the same as last autumn!
On the one hand, the purchase price has increased slightly, but on the other hand, the retail price has remained the same. What does this mean?
This means that the income of farmers has increased, while the expenditures of commodity food consumers such as urban residents have not increased, but have remained stable.
The only ones whose interests have been harmed are those grain merchants.
They might have earned ten thousand taels of silver in previous years, but this year they could only earn eight thousand taels of silver.
Are the grain merchants happy? They are definitely not happy, but is there any way? There is no way!
The Zhili Grain Company, a subsidiary of Datang Grain Corporation, purchases and sells grain at fixed prices, and uses its huge financial resources and grain reserves to consolidate grain prices in almost the entire Zhili Sidao area.
You know, this is one of the four Zhili provinces, and Jiangnan Road among them is the real granary. Regardless of its small size, the grain output produced by any county is higher than that of any prefecture under other provinces.
This can be seen from their agricultural tax revenue. If you take any county, it can defeat most other provinces.
These days, Huguang has not yet been fully developed. If Huguang is mature enough, the world will not be able to suffice it. However, Jiangnan now is truly Jiangnan mature and the world will be sufficient.
This also means that the food production in the Zhili Fourth Road, especially Jiangnan Road, is huge. It is really difficult to control the grain prices in the Zhili Fourth Road area and go in the direction that the empire wants to see.
In order to achieve this, the Zhili Grain Company mobilized huge resources. They used many low-interest loans, with a total amount of more than five million taels of silver.
At the same time, a large amount of tax revenue from the Ministry of Taxation’s treasury was used!
Nowadays, the "Unified Agricultural Tax" of the Tang Dynasty adopts a parallel system of physical goods and cash. According to the voluntary principle, taxpayers can pay cash or crops of equal value. Therefore, after collecting taxes, the tax department will often get a large amount of grain.
and various other physical objects.
Originally, part of this grain would be used as reserve grain, while the remaining part would be sold, flowed into the market, and exchanged for cash into the national treasury.
Today, the Ministry of Taxation directly cooperates with the Zhili Grain Company, and the grain obtained during the tax collection process is directly sold to the Zhili Grain Company.
Therefore, even if the Zhili Grain Company does not collect grain, it still has the most grain on hand among the many grain merchants in the four districts of Zhili.
How many?
All other grain dealers have more grain reserves than the Zhili Grain Company.
The Ministry of Taxation levies agricultural taxes. The taxes are fixed and generally account for about 30% of the grain output in an ordinary year. Of course, farmers may not necessarily pay grain directly as taxes. Some of them will also pay cash directly.
.
But generally speaking, most of the agricultural taxes collected by the Ministry of Taxation are mainly based on grain.
In other words, about 15% of all the grain production in Zhili Fourth Road was finally taken away by the tax department, and then when it changed hands, the grain was directly handed over to the Zhili Grain Company.
Although this fifteen percent is not an accurate value, it is conceivable that this is still a huge number. If converted into silver, it would be worth nearly seven million taels of silver.
In the seven years of Xuanping, the total tax revenue of Zhili Fourth Road reached nearly 30 million taels of silver. This figure is quite terrifying, because in the seven years of Xuanping, the total tax revenue in the seven years of Xuanping does not include Hubei, Sichuan, Yunnan, Liaodong and other places.
At the beginning of the year, in areas that Datang had not yet actually controlled, the regular tax revenue of the entire Datang Empire, that is, excluding all kinds of trophies, confiscations, fines and other non-conventional revenue, if only tax revenue was counted, it was only six
Just fifteen million taels.
However, Zhili Fourth Road has a monopoly of 30 million!
From this data, you will know why the Tang Empire made Jinling its capital, why it opened a business zone in Shanghai, why it established a heavy industry base in Dangtu, and why there was such a special administrative agency at the provincial level as Zhili Fourth Road instead of
It is as simple as setting up provinces directly like other regions, because here, almost every prefecture and every county is very important.
Therefore, the empire needs to directly govern and control the four regions of Zhili and strengthen its influence!
Among the 30 million taxes in Zhili Fourth Road, agricultural taxes still account for the bulk, accounting for about 40%, which is about 14 million silver. Although the industry and commerce in Zhili Fourth Road develops rapidly, it still remains the same in terms of time.
It is a little short-lived, and many companies are still in the tax preferential period, so the tax does not exceed the agricultural tax. The overall amount is only half of the agricultural tax, about 7 million, and the rest is the two special taxes of customs duties and salt tax.
.
Well, the salt tax is more than 4 million taels of silver, which is only a little less than the industrial and commercial tax!
At least half of the 14 million agricultural tax is collected in kind such as grain, which is then basically handed over directly to the local branch of the Zhili Grain Company in the winter.
This also means that the Zhili Grain Company has just been listed, and already has reserve grain worth 7 million taels, and then there are also 5 million taels of low-interest loans provided by the Royal Bank and Industrial Bank, and more
Don't mention it, there is still a low-interest loan line of five million taels that is useless.
I would like to ask, which grain merchant in Zhili Fourth Road, or even in the entire Huaxia region, can have so much reserve grain and cash?