Highlights: Premier Wen's Government Work Report

( 2012-March-5 10:10:26)

Highlights: Premier Wen's Government Work Report

 

Following are the highlights of a government work report distributed to media ahead the annual session of the National People's Congress (NPC) Monday morning.

The report is expected to be delivered by Premier Wen Jiabao at the session.

MAJOR TARGETS FOR 2012

-- GDP will grow by 7.5 percent.

-- Consumer Price Index (CPI) increase will be kept around 4 percent.

-- More than 9 million new jobs will be created in towns and cities. The registered urban unemployment rate will be kept at 4.6 percent or lower.

-- The volume of total exports and imports will increase by around 10 percent.

-- China will make further progress in industrial restructuring, innovation, energy conservation, and emissions reduction, and ensure that both urban and rural residents' real incomes increase in line with economic growth.

-- A deficit of 800 billion yuan is projected, a decrease to around 1.5 percent of GDP, consisting of 550 billion yuan in central government deficit and 250 billion yuan in local government bonds.

FISCAL AND MONETARY POLICIES

-- China will continue to implement a proactive fiscal policy. The government will increase spending on areas important to people's wellbeing.

-- China will continue to implement a prudent monetary policy. The broad money supply is projected to increase by 14 percent.

-- China will make the floating exchange rate regime more flexible and keep the RMB exchange rate basically stable at an appropriate and balanced level.

PRICE CONTROL

-- China will control prices and prevent inflation from rebounding by effectively carrying out macroeconomic policies, managing the supply of money and credit, and striving for basic equilibrium in aggregate supply and demand.

AGRICULTURE

-- Efforts will be made to increase farmers' income, support agricultural technology development, develop rural infrastructure and protect farm land.

-- The central fiscal plans to allocate 1.23 trillion yuan for agriculture, rural areas and farmers, 186.8 billion yuan more than last year.

ECONOMIC RESTRUCTURING

-- To accelerate the transformation of the economic development pattern and carry out strategic adjustment of the economic structure is both a long-term and most pressing task at present.

NUCLEAR POWER

-- China will safely and effectively develop nuclear power.

MONITORING PM 2.5

-- China will start monitoring fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River delta, the Pearl River delta and other key areas as well as in municipalities directly under the central government and provincial capital cities in 2012.

-- The monitoring will be extended to all cities at and above the prefectural level by 2015.

GOING BLUE

-- China will formulate and implement a strategy for marine development, and promote the development of the marine economy.

SPENDING MORE IN EDUCATION

-- The central government has prepared its budget to meet the requirement that government spending on education accounts for 4 percent of the GDP.

-- The government will enhance school bus safety to ensure children's safety.