Central govt aims to promote local rollout of national policies
Encouragement measures like fund and land usage rights are expected to raise local governments' motivation to effectively implement key national policies, but different evaluation indexes for various development priority zones should be established, expert noted on Thursday.
The comments came after the State Council Information Office (SCIO) held a press conference to introduce measures proposed by the State Council, the country's cabinet, to reward local authorities that achieved significant results in implementing key national policies in 2016.
Since last year, the Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) has been allocating some construction land to reward regions with notable achievements, Zhuang Shaoqin, head of the planning bureau of the ministry, said at the conference. The land will be used for projects that are mainly intended to stabilize growth, adjust economic structures, raise living standards and offset weaknesses, he said.
The Ministry of Finance plans to provide 600 million yuan ($87 million) to reward seven cities and 24 counties and the MLR will allocate 91,000 mu (6,066 hectares) of land to encourage 10 cities and 44 counties, he said.
Assigning funds and land will definitely spark local governments' enthusiasm for development, said Tian Yun, director of the research center at the China Society of Macroeconomics.
Local governments are hungry for construction land, as a considerable amount of their fiscal revenue comes from land sales, he noted.
The State Council praised 26 provinces, 90 cities and 127 counties that achieved significant results in implementing key national policies last year. It also announced 24 encouraging measures to reward them, Xi Yanchun, spokeswoman with the SCIO, said at the conference on May 5. Of the measures, five involve fund and land usage rights, 10 are about favorable fund allocation and project arrangement and eight about preferential support in pilot reform programs and fund raising, among others.
For example, the central government will allocate extra awards and subsidies for nine provinces that exceeded the targets for cutting excess capacity.
The move indicates the policy orientation of encouraging local authorities to step up efforts to effectively implement crucial national policies, and it also shows that the State Council has initially established a long-term incentive system based on supervision results.
However, Tian warned that the "Matthew effect" might occur, which means that regions gaining more funds or land support could become better while regions with little support got worse. "Given that different regions have different strategic goals, authorities should set up different evaluation indexes for various development priority zones," he explained.
