BEIJING: China's investment growth should quicken in the coming months as authorities speed up construction work and attract private investors into water projects, a senior official at the country's powerful economic planner said on Tuesday.
The government will accelerate projects such as refurbishing shanty towns and building rail networks and water conservancy facilities to lift investment growth, said Li Pumin, general secretary of the National Development and Reform Commision.
Li also said he was confident that China can achieve its full-year economic growth target of around 7.5 percent.
Fixed-asset investment is a crucial driver of the world's second-biggest economy, having accounted for about 54 percent of China's economic growth last year.
Yet investment growth has sagged this year as a cooling manufacturing sector - factory output hit a six-year low in August - and a softening housing market curtailed spending.
Analysts expect China's investment growth to hit a near 13-year low of 16.3 percent between January and September when it releases the data on Oct 21.
"We expect the pace of slowdown in investment to ease in coming months, as the policy gradually produces results," Li told reporters at a briefing.
China will launch 172 key water conservancy projects in the coming years, officials at the briefing said.
They said work on some projects worth around 600 billion yuan ($98 billion) was already under way, but did not give a total investment figure for all 172 projects.
The remarks came after Premier Li Keqiang recently promised to launch major investment projects in information networks, water conservancy and environmental protection to support China's economy.
(1 US dollar = 6.1236 Chinese yuan.
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