China News Service, Beijing, September 7 (Reporter Zhao Jianhua) Recently, six departments of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the Central Agricultural Office, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance, the People's Bank of China, and the State Financial Supervision Administration jointly issued the "Implementation Plan for Prioritizing the Development of Agriculture and Rural Areas and Improving the Rural Revitalization Investment Mechanism" (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan"). The "Plan" deploys 13 key tasks around improving the diversified investment pattern, strengthening coordination and linkage, and improving the work responsibility system.
The "Plan" proposes to improve the diversified investment pattern with fiscal priority guarantee, financial focus tilt, and active social participation. By 2030, a rural revitalization investment mechanism with a reasonable structure, scientific approach, and equal emphasis on quality and efficiency will be basically established. Xiao Hongwei, director and researcher of the Policy Simulation Laboratory of the Economic Forecasting Department of the National Information Center of the National Development and Reform Commission, said in an interview that rural revitalization investment has long faced three core issues: "Where does the money come from?" "Where does the money go?"
In terms of improving the diversified investment pattern, the "Plan" makes arrangements from six dimensions. Strengthen the priority guarantee of government funds, implement the policy of using land transfer revenue for agriculture and rural areas, increase interest compensation in major grain-producing areas, and maintain a stable scale of normalized assistance funds from the central government. Give full play to the role of bond funds in supporting agriculture, coordinate various types of bonds to support rural infrastructure and industrial development, and encourage the issuance of rural revitalization bonds. Improve the efficiency of credit funds in supporting agriculture, deepen the implementation of special actions to support rural revitalization through financial support, and promote mortgage financing for live livestock and poultry, agricultural facilities, etc.
Xiao Hongwei believes that credit support is a highlight of the Plan. In the past, rural financial services had narrow coverage and single products. The "Plan" clearly promotes financial institutions to focus on major grain-producing counties, major seed-producing counties, and key counties supporting rural revitalization. At the same time, the "Plan" proposes to make good use of insurance tools to support agriculture, improve the multi-level agricultural insurance system, implement full-cost insurance and planting income insurance policies for rice, wheat, corn, and soybeans; stimulate the vitality of private investment, use loan discounts, investment-bond linkage and other methods to mobilize patient capital, support the establishment of rural revitalization funds; revitalize rural resource assets, accelerate the construction of property rights transfer and trading platforms, and support the issuance of infrastructure REITs for agriculture-related projects.
Investment in rural revitalization is not to be managed separately, but to form a joint force. The "Plan" proposes to promote the coordinated development of government investment, financial support, and private investment, strengthen the government financing guarantee system, improve the risk compensation mechanism for agricultural-related loans, and implement the new PPP mechanism; promote the coordination and linkage of industrial policies, investment policies, and trade policies, and focus on the development of new agricultural productivity to promote the extension and strengthening of industrial chains; strengthen the "trinity" of prices, subsidies, and insurance in the same direction, improve the grain price formation mechanism and the minimum purchase price policy for rice and wheat, and stabilize income expectations.
The key to good policies lies in implementation. The "Plan" makes arrangements from four aspects: consolidating work responsibilities, strengthening factor guarantees, optimizing the investment environment, strengthening supervision and management, and incentives and constraints. It implements a working mechanism in which the central government coordinates, provinces take overall responsibility, and cities, counties and townships implement implementation. It improves the full life cycle supervision of government investment projects and the full chain supervision system of funds, and uses performance management results as an important reference for fiscal budget arrangements and policy adjustments.
Xiao Hongwei said that the "Plan" provides a systematic institutional solution to solve the problem of "where does the money come from" for rural revitalization. With implementation, a diversified investment pattern featuring fiscal priority, financial focus, and active social participation will accelerate to form, providing strong support for consolidating and expanding the results of poverty alleviation, accelerating the filling of shortcomings in agricultural and rural modernization, and solidly promoting comprehensive rural revitalization.
