Since the late 1970s, Guangdong vigorously and spectacularly
eliminated transportation and energy bottlenecks with remarkable
infrastructure investment and a package of preferential investment
policies to support high-demanding social and economic development.
Especially at the end of the Eighth Five-year Plan period
(1990-1995) and the beginning of the Ninth Five-year
Plan(1996-2000), infrastructure investment growth used to outshine
economic growth and supplied staunch support to Guangdong's
economic development.
However, upon finishing construction of facilities for the Ninth
National Games and other large-scale projects, Guandong recorded a
sharp decline in infrastructure investment growth in the second
half of 2001. Compared to other provinces and the national average
level, Guangdong lagged far behind in the field of fixed assets
investment growth. Statistics indicate that from January to October
2001, Guangdong, a developed province, ranked 28th among 31
provinces in the growth of infrastructure investment, urban
facilities reconstruction investment, real estate investment and
other investment, 7.5 percent lower than the national average
growth.
Guangdong Governor Lu Ruihua has vowed to reinvigorate investment
structure by favoring investment in public-interest fields, social
and infrastructure facilities, according to a government work
report to Guangdong provincial people's congress.
"The government will continue to issue long-term treasure bond for
construction this year. Guangdong is resolved to take advantage of
lower interest rates and sufficient funds in banks to launch new
wave of infrastructure construction investment spree in 2002," Lu
said.
According to Governor Lu, the new wave of infrastructure investment
will be different from that of the past. "Five networks, two
railways and two ports" are listed as priorities in Guangdong's
Tenth Five-year Plan (2001-2005). "Five networks" refers to an
expressway network, information network, quality-graded water
supply network, liquid natural gas supply network and electricity
network. "Two railways" refers to the Guangzhou underground railway
and Shenzhen underground railway projects and to the light railway
express transportation system among Pearl River Delta cities. And
"two ports" refer to air and seaports.
The plan is that the new infrastructure facilities will lay a solid
foundation for Pearl River Delta to make a second take-off. One
part of the "Two railways" project -- Guangzhou-Foshan and
Guangzhou-Dongguan light rail projects that are in active
preparation work -- has attracted immense attention of Foshan city
and Dongguan city deputies. Dong Xing, a deputy from Dongguan, said
that Dongguan municipality would be in full support of the project.
Deputies from Foshan even suggested upgrading the light rail to an
underground railway.
Non-government investment has increased fast in recent years but
mainly in the real estate industry. According to statistics from
the Guangdong Provincial Statistics Bureau, Guangdong has yet to
resolve issues such as investment sector access, financing channels
and uncertain expected turnout to boost total amount of private
investment that to take the place of government investment.
In
the government work report, Governor Lu paid much attention to
private investment. He proposed to reform the investment case
appraisal system to break up monopolies and adopt a legal
individual bidding system for infrastructure facility projects to
encourage social funding of major infrastructure projects. Except
for a few projects that must be operated and controlled under state
monopoly, other projects will be further opened to social
investors.
"Domestic private funds should also have access to fields where
foreign funds are permitted to expand their investment depth and
width," Dong Xing said. Guangdong Development Planning Commission
also suggested taking effective measures to usher social investment
to new infrastructure facilities construction. Huang Weihong,
director of the commission, personally predicted Guandong will see
an investment growth of 12 percent, four percent higher than
national average fixed assets investment growth with a total
investment of 86.2 billion yuan (US$10.41 billion).
(South China News, translated by Alex Xu, March 20,
2002)