China's highways incurred losses of more than 157 billion yuan ($25.3 billion) in 2014, up from the 66 billion yuan in 2013, according to a report from the Ministry of Transport (MOT) Tuesday.
Highways in China reported toll revenue of around 391.6 billion yuan in 2014, while total spending reached about 548.7 billion yuan, according to the MOT report published on its official website on Tuesday,
Debt repayment accounted for the largest proportion of Chinese highways' overall spending in China in 2014, which amounted to more than 75 percent of the spending.
Maintenance expenditure and operation management accounted for 8.6 percent and 9.7 percent in the overall spending, respectively.
The construction of highways on borrowed money has greatly boosted the development of the transport network of China in the past decades, the MOT said, and tolls will continue to be in place for a period as the fiscal revenue is still not enough to fund the development of the transport network.
The MOT report also showed that China's highways had a debt of about 3,845 billion yuan by the end of 2014, but the debt risks are within a controllable limit.
The MOT also said that when the period of large-scale construction passes and the country has an improved highway network, the highways would have stronger debt repayment capability.
