(Yicai Global) July 16 -- China's southwestern Sichuan province today unwrapped the country's largest-ever provincial-level exercise in mixed-ownership reform to date, involving as much as CNY320 billion (USD46.6 billion) of state-owned assets.

The central government started the so-called mixed-ownership reform initiative in 2014 to boost the competitiveness of moribund state-owned enterprises through private capital injections. Many giant SOEs have already admitted masses of what China terms 'social capital.'

Sichuan's plan involves more than 110 enterprises in 179 projects across finance, tourism, real estate, environmental protection, energy and other sectors, according to the administrator of the province's SOEs.

The province is the largest economic entity in western China and the volume of its state assets ranks sixth in the country. Its SOEs had assets of CNY10.2 trillion (USD1.5 trillion) as of the end of last month, public information shows.

Of the planned makeovers, 47 projects will take the form of share transfers, 54 will unfold via share capital increases, and 78 will transform through joint ventures. They plan to seek over CNY43 billion in non-government investment.

With 179 projects, today's project promotion meeting involved the most schemes so far and has the highest investment and the most assets since China's local branches of the national State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission started to promote ownership reform.

Editor: Liao Shumin, Ben Armour