NPC reviews economic reports

CHINA’S top legislature yesterday held a plenary meeting to review reports on enforcement of the national economic and social development plan and budget implementation.

He Lifeng, head of the National Development and Reform Commission, made a report on the enforcement of the national economic and social development plan at the meeting of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee’s bimonthly session.

China’s economy has maintained steady growth with good momentum in the first half of 2018, He said, warning that it has become difficult to maintain a steady and sound economic growth in the face of longstanding structural contradictions domestically and a complicated international environment.

While delivering a report on the implementation of this year’s budget to lawmakers, Minister of Finance Liu Kun said the country’s general public budget revenue from January to July was nearly 12.2 trillion yuan (US$1.8 trillion), while the general public budget expenditure in the same period was nearly 12.6 trillion yuan, up 10 percent and 7.3 percent, respectively.

At the meeting, Minister of Education Chen Baosheng gave a report on education equality to the legislators.

The report, which focuses on the coordinated development of compulsory education in urban and rural areas while giving particular attention to rural areas, said 80,000 university graduates were selected to work in rural regions in 2017 and the number will be 90,000 in 2018.

The lawmakers also deliberated a report on a temporary adjustment to the application of the civil servant law in some regions and some central organs in Beijing.