On July 26, when visiting Tibet, Premier Li Keqiang of the State Council also proposed to speed up the completion of the shortcomings and speed up infrastructure construction in the central and western regions by expanding effective investment. At the same time, Guangdong, Hubei, Qinghai and other provinces have recently proposed that investment in key projects will be accelerated in the second half year.
Industry analysts said China's infrastructure investment index will hit bottom in the second half of the year and stabilize, reversing the downward trend in the first half of the year, but there will still be a gap compared with last year.
In the first half of 2018, the growth rate of China's infrastructure investment declined. Statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics show that in the first half of the year, the national infrastructure investment growth rate was 7.3%, compared with the same period last year, the growth rate dropped by 13.8 percentage points.
Several provinces have made key arrangements for the implementation of investment in the second half of the year while releasing the signal of "promoting the steady growth of effective investment" at the national regular meeting.
On the afternoon of July 24, the Guangdong Provincial Government convened a meeting to accelerate the investment of key projects in the province, and studied and deployed the work of accelerating the investment of key projects in the province. Lin Shaochun, the Standing Committee of the Guangdong Provincial Committee and deputy governor of the Provincial Committee, said at the meeting that Guangdong will put the work on promoting the steady growth of investment in an important position, focusing on the supporting role of major infrastructure and major industrial projects. According to the notice on the investment plan of the major project of supply side structural reform in July, which was issued by Guangdong Province, the province will promote the project of rural distribution network, natural gas backbone pipe network and resource protection capability, new generation infrastructure engineering, new energy vehicle charging infrastructure project, urban underground pipe network worker. Nine categories and 18 projects, including Cheng, transportation network projects, water conservancy disaster prevention and mitigation projects and water safety and security capacity projects, have a total investment of more than 1.9 trillion yuan. Traffic network project is the key of the investment plan of Guangdong supplement board in 2018. It consists of four parts: Highway Engineering, rail transit project, port and navigation project and ordinary highway engineering. The investment amount is 1 trillion and 300 billion yuan. In terms of rail transit, Guangdong plans to build 19 new high-speed rail / intercity projects in the next 6 years, with a total investment of 480 billion 742 million yuan.
In July, the central province of Hubei also held a plan for the planning of major projects in the people's livelihood. The meeting stressed that the relevant units of Hubei province should be based on the development of reality, focusing on the improvement of the people's livelihood, and planning a number of potential and promising projects to promote the rapid and good development of the social cause.
In the western province, Qinghai Province in the late July reached the goal of the key construction project of fixed assets investment in 2018, in order to give full play to the support and pull effect of key projects on investment. This year, 190 key projects were arranged in Qinghai, mainly involving water conservancy, transportation, energy, information, urban infrastructure, and industrial optimization. In terms of level, ecological construction and improvement of people's livelihood, the total investment of the project is 853 billion 500 million yuan, and the annual plan has invested 180 billion yuan in 8 aspects.
At the Hebei provincial economic development promotion conference held in July 22nd, Dang Xiaolong, director of the Hebei provincial development and Reform Commission, said that the project should be built and the effective investment should be expanded to provide strong support for the high quality development of the province's economy.
Jiangsu province has issued the "2018 investment plan for the major projects of the supplement board", which is required to ensure that 200 major projects have completed more than 360 billion yuan of the annual investment. Comprehensive collation of the recent provincial announcement of this year's major project investment plans can be found, "short board" is one of the key words.
The Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held a meeting in July 31st. Analyze and study the current economic situation and deploy the second half of the economic work. The meeting of the Political Bureau clearly pointed out that we should maintain a stable and healthy economic development, adhere to the implementation of a positive fiscal policy and a prudent monetary policy. We should take the short board as the focus of deepening the supply side reform, and intensify the short board in the field of infrastructure.
In the first half of this year, investment grew by 6%, the lowest growth rate in nearly 20 years. The major decline in infrastructure investment is the main reason. The growth rate of infrastructure investment in the first half of this year is only 7.2%, and the average annual rate of increase over the past 20 years over 20% is too obvious. In addition to cleaning up the impact of PPP, railway investment fell by 10.3%, which is also the main reason.
In the second half of the year, "iron cock" has become a major force for steady growth. In addition, there should be some benchmark projects in Rural Revitalization.
In conjunction with the financial need to better cooperate with finance in July 23rd, it is necessary to provide "reasonable financing" for the financing platform. It can be foreseen that more policies will be introduced in the follow-up, so as to dredge the monetary policy transmission mechanism and improve the means of financial and financial stability to stabilize the economy and increase investment in infrastructure.
Infrastructure investment in the second half of 2018 is different from that in the past. It will focus on "short board, increase strength and benefit people's livelihood". For example, he said, such as rural infrastructure, environmental protection projects, affordable housing construction projects will become the focus. Where will the funds to accelerate the effective investment be achieved? As the country's regular meeting is clear, in promoting the construction of infrastructure projects, the second half of the year will speed up the 1 trillion and 350 billion yuan local government special bond issuance and use of the progress, half a year in the past half time in the past, the remaining 1 trillion of the local government special bonds have not been used. In addition, there is still room for fiscal policy within the deficit, and by issuing municipal debt and high quality PPP projects will also provide funds for the local government's infrastructure construction. Moodie, an international rating agency, said that China's relaxation of fiscal policy and monetary policy to promote stable growth in effective investment will not significantly increase China's fiscal expenditure, which will only lead to a small increase in government debt, but it also means the government is more difficult to balance the balance between deleveraging and steady growth.
In the second half of this year, capital construction will become a steady growth, and the approximate rate will rise steadily. In the first half of 2018, the growth rate of investment in capital construction fell considerably. The main reason is: on the one hand, the approval of the capital construction projects was compressed by the Department of capital construction approved by the competent department in 2017, and the capital resources of capital construction were blocked on the other.
Based on the above reasons, in the second half of the capital construction department may be tightened from the policy tone in the first half of the adjustment to a neutral slightly loose, in order to stabilize economic growth.
Judging from the source of capital of the infrastructure, the marginal increment determined in the second half of the year comes from the local bond financing. This year, the local government's replacement debt issue is about 1 trillion and 730 billion, issuing general debt 830 billion and issuing special debt 1 trillion and 350 billion. Although the scale of local government's general debt has not expanded this year, the expansion of special debt is 550 billion. In particular, the use of local government special debt has been expanded from the original land reserve to infrastructure uses such as shelter and highway construction. The future continued expansion is still an event. Local bond financing should be the main support for stabilizing investment in infrastructure in the second half of the year. According to the debt situation published by the budget department of the Ministry of finance of the state in May of this year, the country has issued 876 billion 600 million yuan of local government bonds in the first 5 months, and the replacement bond is 859 billion 500 million yuan. That is, the general debt and special debt on behalf of new local bonds have not yet started large-scale issuance. And the remaining 870 billion of the replacement debt must end in August this year. In addition, from the perspective of matching funds, we can provide necessary financial support for fund investment stabilization and recovery in the second half of the year.
If the central bank can be partial to infrastructure support funds, there will be more than expected capital construction in the second half of the year. In view of the super expectation, we should pay more attention to the central bank's capital construction and the Ministry of Finance in anticipation of the handling of the invisible debt.
In view of the fact that local funds were not in place in the first half of this year, the backlog was built on infrastructure projects. If follow up bank financing can carry out the requirements of the National Convention, give the necessary rationing. The three quarter will see a steady recovery in infrastructure. We can make a rough judgement from the two Politburo meetings and the central bank's monetary policy report. Infrastructure construction in the second half of the year will focus on cross-regional transportation driven by urbanization, information infrastructure, underground comprehensive corridors, rural "four good" highways, ecological and environmental protection.
