BEIJING, May 5 (Reuters) - China's state planner will
step up credit support for projects with private investment, the
state-run People's Daily reported on Friday, reinforcing efforts
to encourage more private capital investment in major projects.
Despite better-than-expected economic growth in the first
quarter, the recovery of the world's second-largest economy has
seen public investment outpacing sluggish private investment by
a big margin.
Private sector fixed-asset investment only grew 0.6% during
January-March from a year earlier while state sector investment
jumped 10.0%, official data showed.
An official from the National Development and Reform
Commission (NDRC) told the newspaper that as part of the bid to
encourage private investment, private capital would be treated
equally, without discrimination, when distributing government
investment funds.
"In recent years, due to the impacts from the global
economic situation and the pandemic, some private firms suffered
declining profits, cash flow shortage and inability to
reinvest," the newspaper cited the NDRC official as saying.
"In addition, some private firms face financing difficulties
and high financing costs," which resulted in their inability to
take part in big infrastructure projects - like "a small horse
pulling a big cart", the People's Daily said.
Some private firms said they were willing to participate in
projects in the hope of good yields but there were still
"tangible or intangible barriers to the market access".
According to the NDRC official, local governments in 2022
promoted more than 50,000 projects to investors and about 9,000
of them attracted private capital to the tune of about 2.9
trillion yuan ($419.44 billion).
The Politburo, a top decision-making body of the ruling
Communist Party, said last week that the government would
reinforce business confidence and stimulate private investment.
($1 = 6.9139 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(Reporting by Ellen Zhang and Ryan Woo; editing by Robert
Birsel)
