There’s new movement about investment in local places since the third quarter.
For example, fixed-asset investment in some western regions like Xinjiang and Tibet accelerates. The latest statistics showed that fixed-asset investment in Xinjiang rose by 27.8 percent during January and July, 20.3 percentage points higher than that during the same period of last year.
In addition, public-private-partnership (PPP) greatly boosted private investment. Cities including Chengdu and Xi’an launched a batch of PPP projects with investment amount worth hundreds of billions of yuan.
Xinjiang sees rapid growth in fixed-asset investment
According to data disclosed by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), fixed-asset investment of Xinjiang and Tibet moved up by 27.8 and 23.5 percent during January and July respectively. The growth was 20.3 percentage points and 8.3 percentage points higher than that during the same period of last year, and 3.2 percentage points and 2.6 percentage points higher than that during January and June.
Overall investment of China grew by only 8.3 percent during the same period. It can be seen from the above data that Xinjiang saw rapid growth in fixed-asset investment, which kept ranking the first in recent several months.
Investment in Xinjiang, particularly investment related to highway construction, developed quicker. Xinjiang only finished 28 percent of the annual target of highway construction in the first half of this year. But the latest data showed that by the end of August, highway construction of Xinjian has finished 101.7 billion yuan of investment, accounting for 51 percent of annual investment target and nearly three times of that of last year.
Xinjiang received much attention as it aimed to gain 1.5 trillion yuan of investment, up by over 50 percent. However, fixed-asset investment which has been completed accounted for 49.28 percent of the annual target of Xinjiang’s investment.
It is learnt that Xinjiang inspects work about fixed-asset investment in 2017 from the latter half of August so as to ensure fulfillment of the target. It can be predicated that Xinjiang will move quicker in making fixed-asset investment soon.
speeds up reviewing transportation infrastructure construction projects
The NDRC also quickened in reviewing transportation infrastructure construction projects in recent two months. It approved 6 projects or plans involving investment more than 200 billion yuan in July and August.
Progress has been made in some transportation infrastructure investment projects. According to data from the Ministry of Transport, in the first 7 months of this year, fixed-asset investment in highway construction recorded 1,098.8 billion yuan, up by 27.8 percent year on year; fixed-asset investment in railway construction registered 380.5 billion yuan, up by 2.9 percent from a year earlier; fixed-asset investment in civil aviation construction reached 47 billion yuan, representing a year-on-year increase of 27.0 percent.
Industry insiders stated that seen from historical data, railway construction will be accelerated and more projects will be approved in the third and fourth quarters. In order to achieve the annual 800-billion-yuan investment target, the NDRC will increase investment in the third quarter.
In fact, the NDRC held a meeting discussing preparative work of railway construction projects in June. NDRC’s deputy head Hu Zucai stressed that the third quarter was very crucial. So it will strengthen efforts in the third quarter so as to ensure that newly-started projects can be completed as scheduled.
Many places launch PPP projects
Cities including Chengdu and Xi’an have launched a batch of PPP projects with investment amount worth hundreds of billions of yuan since August. Shanxi province also prosed to add at least 150 PPP demonstration projects with total investment worth over 200 billion yuan this year.
Besides, Guizhou province rolled out China’s first 3-year action plan for PPP project to promote 1,000 projects in traditional infrastructure and social public service fields such as transportation, energy, water conservancy, environmental protection and municipal engineering.
PPP has played an important role in attracting private investment in the second half of this year. While explaining key emphasis of investment work for the second half, the NDRC recently underlined that it would push forward PPP project and drive private capitals to join in PPP projects.
However, Tang Jianwei, chief analyst from financial research center of Bank of Communications, said in an interview of Shanghai Securities News that under the background with financial deleverage, cost of funds hikes and availability of financing may decrease, which may influence implementation of PPP projects. On the whole, investment in infrastructure construction is likely to slow down slightly in the third quarter, but the growth for the whole year will keep at above 15 percent.
Translated by Vanessa Chen
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