Last year, China issued an additional 1 trillion yuan of national debt to support post disaster recovery and reconstruction and enhance the capacity for disaster prevention, mitigation and relief. The reporter learned that the relevant funds had been released to all places before February this year. Local governments are speeding up the construction of additional treasury bond issuance projects. Up to now, the operating rate of 15000 projects has exceeded 70%. Relevant departments will promote the remaining projects to start before the end of June.
At present, the machinery and equipment of Beijiao Village Section of Baixi Line of Township Road Y359 of the Rural Highway Flood Damage Reconstruction Project in Gaoyi County, Shijiazhuang City are booming, and the construction workers are carrying out slope protection pouring operations. This year, the total mileage of the rehabilitation and reconstruction project of flood damaged rural roads and ancillary facilities in Gaoyi County is 3.759 km, with a total investment of 12.45 million yuan. Up to now, more than 70% of the total work has been completed.
It is reported that the additional issuance of treasury bonds for rural roads in Shijiazhuang this year involves 30 packages, with a total of 731 million yuan of treasury bonds issued. 44 phased recovery projects have been completed, and the remaining 167 national debt projects have all started construction.
In the second half of last year, China issued an additional 1 trillion yuan of national debt, which was mainly used in eight key areas, including supporting post disaster recovery and reconstruction in North China, with Beijing Tianjin Hebei as the focus, and improving disaster prevention and mitigation capacity, irrigation area construction and reconstruction, and key soil erosion control projects.
Liu Sushe, Deputy Director of the National Development and Reform Commission, had previously introduced at the press conference of the Office of the State Council that in February this year, the National Development and Reform Commission had completed the issuance of the list of all three batches of additional treasury bonds with a total amount of 1 trillion yuan, and had allocated the additional treasury bonds to about 15000 specific projects.
"The overall progress of additional treasury bond issuance projects is smooth." Li Chao, spokesman of the National Development and Reform Commission, said recently that all regions are working hard to promote the commencement of projects. Up to now, of the 15000 projects that have been launched, about 11000 have been launched, with an operating rate of more than 70%. In particular, the overall progress of post disaster recovery and reconstruction projects is relatively fast, and the project commencement rate in 8 provinces and cities, including North China, with Beijing Tianjin Hebei as the focus, has reached about 80%. A number of education, hospital, road, water supply and other projects closely related to people's well-being have been basically completed and can be put into use before the flood season.
More than half of the 1 trillion yuan of additional national debt will be used for the construction of water conservancy facilities related to flood control and waterlogging drainage, focusing on supporting water conservancy projects such as the repair of local water damage projects and the construction of irrigation areas. The reporter learned from the Ministry of Water Resources that from January to April, 5870 additional national debt water conservancy projects had been implemented and 106 billion yuan had been invested. Among them, 927 new construction and modernization projects in large and medium-sized irrigation areas have completed an investment of 17.5 billion yuan.
"Last year, nearly 1200 additional national debt projects were issued to support irrigation areas, providing a rare opportunity to promote the high-quality development of irrigation areas. After the completion of these projects, about 60 million mu of irrigation area could be newly restored and improved," said Zhang Dunqiang, the first level inspector of the Rural Water Resources and Hydropower Department of the Ministry of Water Resources.
It is worth noting that all the additional 1 trillion yuan of national debt is allocated to local governments through transfer payment, which is listed as the central fiscal deficit. The central government will bear the principal and interest payments, without increasing the local repayment burden. Experts in the industry said that the additional issuance of national debt has greatly eased the pressure on local funds, not only helping the disaster stricken people to restore normal production and living conditions as soon as possible, and vigorously improving their ability to prevent disasters, but also helping to support infrastructure spending to maintain a certain intensity and expand effective investment.
"With the issuance of all additional treasury bond funds to local governments, the expenditure on agriculture, forestry, water affairs and urban and rural community affairs to which the additional treasury bond funds are mainly invested achieved double-digit growth year-on-year in the first quarter, with growth rates of 13.1% and 12.1% respectively, rising from the same period last year and the whole year last year." Yan Yanming, a researcher of CITIC International Research Institute, said.
The reporter learned that, in the next step, relevant departments will also promote the construction and implementation of additional treasury bond issuance projects. According to the teleconference organized by the National Development and Reform Commission to promote the implementation of additional national debt issuance projects in 2023, it will promote the construction of all additional national debt issuance projects by the end of June this year, especially to accelerate the construction progress of flood prevention, flood damage and other projects, and ensure that key recovery and reconstruction projects are completed and put into use before the flood season this year.
Li Chao introduced that the National Development and Reform Commission has made a series of arrangements from the whole chain of capital distribution, project promotion and process supervision to ensure that the project construction is carried out on time and with high quality, and that the benefits of national debt funds are fully exerted. Among them, an online project scheduling mechanism has been established to track and supervise the project progress throughout the process. At the same time, local governments were organized to carry out self-examination of projects. On this basis, this year, the whole chain and full cycle on-site supervision was carried out for projects in 31 provinces in three batches to help local governments solve difficulties and accelerate the implementation of projects.
