21st Century Business Herald:

Government funds always play a leveraging role in effectively propelling the expansion of total investment. With special-purpose bonds being an important channel, will local governments issue more this year? In what fields will the bonds be mainly invested? You've just mentioned the funds should be used as soon as possible so that they can take effect early.

Liu Kun: 

Now let's give the floor to Vice Minister Xu Hongcai.

Xu Hongcai:

Issuing special-purpose bonds for local governments is essential for driving and expanding effective investment and maintaining macroeconomic stability. Since 2018, newly added special-purpose bonds for local governments have totaled 14.6 trillion yuan. Among them, newly added bonds in 2022 totaled 4 trillion yuan, including those enlisted in government budgets and allocated from unused quotas before in accordance with law, used to support the construction of 30,000 key projects. These projects helped strengthen the economic foundation, enhance areas of weakness, improve people's lives, expand investment, and propel social and economic development.

This year, we will step up proactive fiscal policies. According to the Central Conference on Economic Work, tools like deficits, special-purpose bonds, and interest subsidies should be better combined to guarantee the sustainability of government funds and control local government bond risks while supporting high-quality development. We will follow and implement the principles of the Central Conference on Economic Work, ensuring that the size of special-purpose bonds is kept within an appropriate range. We will ensure government investment does not diminish and that it better plays its leveraging role. The specific amount will be released during the annual session of the National People's Congress.

As for the question of the investment orientation and fields, this year, we will mainly support the construction of projects in the 11 fields set before. On this basis, we will expand the investment fields and the range of funds used as project capital appropriately. We will step up the construction of key projects continuously, make solid achievements, and form the driving force of investment to support high-quality development effectively. These tasks will be further deployed and arranged later. Thank you.