Proactive Policy

China will adopt a more proactive fiscal policy but will not resort to a deluge of strong stimulus policies, Minister of Finance Liu Kun said.

In a recent interview with Xinhua News Agency, Liu said the fiscal policy should be more forward-looking, flexible and effective to play a bigger role in boosting demand, restructuring the economy and promoting high-quality development.

He also stressed that the proactive fiscal policy will prioritize four sectors, namely cutting taxes and fees, improving weak links, boosting consumption and improving people’s livelihood.

Apart from policies to reduce taxes and fees unveiled at the beginning of the year, China has announced more policies to support the real economy and technological innovation, which will help reduce companies’ burdens by more than 1.3 trillion yuan ($188.4 billion) this year, according to Liu.

The minister added that the ministry is working on more measures to cut taxes and fees, which if implemented, will keep the growth of fiscal revenue at a low level in the coming months.

The country’s fiscal revenue rose 4 percent year on year to

1.11 trillion yuan ($160.3 billion) in August, slowing from the 6.1-percent gain in July.

With the economy on a firm footing and fiscal revenue increasing, China lowered its fiscal deficit target for 2018 to 2.6 percent of the GDP, down by 0.4 percentage points compared with 2017. China’s transportation structure in the next three years, with goals of significantly raising the proportion of railway and waterway freight.

In 2020, the railway freight volume will increase by 1.1 billion tons from that in 2017, while the waterway freight volume will go up by 500 million tons, according to the document.

The highway freight volume in coastal ports will drop by 440 million tons from that of 2017.

The program will be mainly implemented in the Beijing-tianjinHebei region along with its surrounding areas, the Yangtze

River Delta, and the plain area in Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces. These regions are key to China’s battle against air pollution.

In addition, the document lists six steps of actions, namely to lift railway capacity, upgrade the water transportation system, regulate highway freight transport, speed up multimodal transport, advance green freight in cities and establish information platforms for multimodal transport.