Grain Production
The General Office of the State Council released a guideline on preventing non-grain use of arable land and stabilizing grain production on November 17.
Underscoring food security as the top priority in agricultural development, the document urged related departments to optimize the grain production structure, implement strict farmland protection policies, and use arable land properly.
It also imposed strict restrictions on converting arable land into other types of agricultural land, such as forests and gardens.
Efforts should also go into preventing the disorderly production of inedible produces with a surplus in the market, it said.
The guideline stressed fulfilling the target of protecting permanent basic farmland, calling for efforts to regulate production and business activities, and prohibit the destructive use of the land.
The government will implement incentive policies and improve the economic compensation mechanism in major grain-producing regions while rolling out measures to encourage local governments and farmers in grain production, it said. the first gain in 2020, official data showed.
During that period, infrastructure investment recovery was weaker than expected, the report said. The rating agency attributed the slower growth partly to the longer-thanexpected approval process and project commencement delays due to a prolonged rainy season in July.
“This may imply some investments will be carried over into the fourth quarter and early 2021,” the report said.
The full-year investment growth in 2021 may be constrained by the special bond quota, which has yet to be announced, it added. risks of corporate bond defaults, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on November 17.
Local governments will be required to carry out stricter supervision through measures such as project screening and inspection, Meng Wei, a spokesperson for the NDRC, told a press conference.
Efforts will be made to establish a cross-department coordination mechanism, improve information disclosure and further unify disclosure rules of the bond market. A prevention and control system will also be put in place to help identify, discover and handle cases as early as possible, while plans to reduce market risks shall be formulated, Meng said.
Amid efforts to better leverage corporate bonds to support the real economy, China began implementing a registration-based system for the public issuance of corporate bonds starting from March, and unveiled regulations on processing and approving bond issuance applications.
Despite new challenges at home and abroad, there have been no corporate bond defaults this year, Meng said.
Official data showed that the issuance of corporate bonds in China reached 476.78 billion yuan ($72.69 billion) as of November 10, a positive growth compared with the same period last year.