Many places introduce a batch of major investment projects just after Chinese New Year, sowing “seeds” for economic growth in 2017. Investment amount of major projects in Hubei, Shaanxi, Henan and other places is worth more than 100 billion yuan and that of first batch of major projects in Jiangsu province is as much as 1.33 trillion yuan.
Noticeably, different from previous situation with infrastructure construction projects taking up great proportion, these places focus more on industrial projects among major investment projects of this year, of which manufacturing projects and strategic emerging industrial projects are popular investment projects.
Major projects with investment amount of 100 billion yuan to kick off
Spring is a season of sowing seeds.
Hubei province plans to start construction of 690 major projects with total investment amount of 458.6 billion yuan in the following month and the investment amount for 2017 will be 145.9 billion yuan.
Jiangsu provincial Party committee and government convened a meeting promoting construction of first batch of major projects on Feb. 12, including 1,363 major projects of 5 categories. The investment amount of these projects is worth 1.33 trillion yuan and more than 430 billion yuan will be invested in this year.
Weinan city of Shaanxi province held a ceremony on project construction commencement on Feb. 13. 135 construction projects will be started at this time with a total investment amount of 79.3 billion yuan and 26.91 billion yuan plans to be invested this year. But in early January, Xi’an city saw commencement of 126 projects with total investment amount of 115.3 billion yuan.
Henan is also one the provinces activating project construction. A batch of major projects with investment amount of over 530 billion yuan was begun in Jiaozuo, Zhengzhou and Xuchang cities in Henan province during Feb. 10 and 13.
According to work report of Henan province, the province should strive to finish investing 1.5 trillion yuan in major projects of this year, up by over 100 billion yuan when compared with that in 2016. The weight of this investment in fixed-asset investment of the province should keep at about 40 percent and drive the fixed-asset investment of the province to grow by more than 12 percent.
In addition, Sichuan province recently issued a work scheme, specifying that the province will organize construction of major projects and each city and county should have at least one concentrated construction start at each quarter. The province has determined 700 provincial major projects with total investment amount of about 3.99 trillion yuan.
As a matter of fact, many places introducing a batch of major investment projects recently is only a beginning of large-scale major project construction in local places this year.
According to statistics by SSN, the investment amount of major projects in many places this year is worth more than 100 billion yuan and that of major projects in Hebei, Anhui, Guangxi, Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces exceeds 500 billion yuan. Jiangxi, Shaanxi, Fujian and Sichuan provinces plan to invest more than 1 trillion yuan.
Many places proposed to carry out activities in 2017 such as transformation and upgrading of construction of major projects and promoting projects, meaning that major project construction is still playing important role in stabilizing investment in local places this year.
Manufacturing and strategic emerging industries gain the most investment
SSN finds that different from previous situation with infrastructure construction projects taking up great proportion, these places focus more on industrial projects among major investment projects of this year, of which manufacturing projects and strategic emerging industrial projects are popular investment projects.For example, 1,050 projects, or nearly 80 percent, of the first batch of projects in Jiangsu province are industrial projects and the total investment amount is 868.9 billion yuan. Specifically, 796 projects are manufacturing projects with investment amount of 580.7 billion yuan.
Wei Ran, deputy head of National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) of Jiangsu province, indicated that among the projects which see construction start this time, the number of projects about new products, new technologies, new business types and new modes increases drastically, which highlights development of real economy including advanced manufacturing and highlights strategic emerging industry and industrial technical transformation.
Industrial projects also take up great proportion in major projects of Sichuan province this year. There are 361 industrial projects, accounting for more than half of major projects of the province, and the investment amount will be 1.78 trillion yuan.
Manufacturing and strategic emerging industrial projects draw the most attention among major projects. Sichuan province proposed to promote project of Dongfeng Peugeot Citroen Automobile, project of the 6th generation of production line of BOE Technology Group Co., Ltd., project of polymer composites of China XD and other major projects, and to quicken constructions of projects such as the 6th generation of production line of BOE Technology, production line of 8.6 generation of crystal panel of China Electronics Corporation, R&D and production project of Geely’s new energy commercial vehicle in Nanchong city and R&D of heavy gas turbine of Dongfeng Motor Co., Ltd.
The investment amount of major construction project of Hubei province this year is more than 1.1 trillion yuan. It is introduced by NDRC of the province that these major projects mainly aim at memory, new energy vehicle and commercial aerospace industries and emerging industries represented by intelligent manufacturing and new display panel, and focus on major infrastructure construction like high-speed rail, expressway, urban underground pipe gallery and airports and water conservancy, zoology and livelihood projects.
“Base number of amount of infrastructure investment is very high, so growth in the investment is limited. Local governments hope investment in infrastructure and industry can boost economic growth together.” Liu Xuezhi, senior researcher from financial research center with Bank of Communications, said in an SSN interview.
Zhang Jun, Chinese economist from Morgan Stanley Huaxin Securities Co., Ltd, told SSN that during the process of deepening supply-side reform in 2017, propelling industrial upgrading so as to improve weak links will be a big direction.
“This means that among the fixed-asset investment, manufacturing investment will reach the bottom and pick up in this year and its year-on-year growth may be nearly 10 percent at the end of this year, which will hedge influence of decline in housing and infrastructure investment to some extent so as to ensure fixed-asset investment keeping stable on the whole.” said Zhang.
Translated by By Vanessa Chen
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