China vows to support private investment, to ensure reasonable growth in second quarter

 

>>REAL-TIME UPDATES IN THE WIRE. CLICK HERE<<<

 

 

Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang said at a State Council meeting on Thursday that China will include private investment projects in the government pool and step up support for the projects and he urged local authorities to protect legitimate interests of private investment and strictly fulfil policy promises, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

China supports healthy development of the platform economy and support private capital’ investment in startups, he said.

China will select a batch of projects from the 102 key projects and the key investment fields for the 14th Five-Year Period (2021 – 2025) to attract private investment, he said.

On the same day, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the top economic planner, said at a press conference that China will promote implementation of policy measures aimed at stabilizing the economy as soon as possible to ensure a reasonable economic growth in the second quarter of the year and lay a solid foundation for the second half of the year.

The growth rate of private investment has slowed this year due to complex and volatile international factors as well as domestic COVID outbreaks, the NDRC said.

From January to May, private investment increased by 4.1%, accounting for 56.9% of overall investment, slowing from 5.3% in the first four months, it said.

Since 2012, when official statistics for private investment began, the proportion of private investment has always stayed above 55% of overall investment.

Private investment is of great significance when trying to maintain a steady growth rate in overall investment and the NDRC will strengthen financing support for private investment, it said.

In addition, the NDRC said it had approved 10 fixed-asset investments worth 121 billion yuan ($18.1 billion) in May, a more than six-fold jump from April.

In the first five months of the year, the NDRC approved a total of 48 fixed-asset investment projects worth a total of 654.2 billion yuan, more than 80% of the 775.4 billion yuan of projects in infrastructure, power, mining, water and manufacturing approved for the whole of 2021.