Road construction to accelerate in central, west China

Road construction in China's central and western regions will speed up following a central government vow to boost the expansion of the railway sector, the China Securities Journal reported Tuesday. Several provincial-level regions, including Yunnan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Tibet, Xinjiang and Sichuan, plan to build new highways in city clusters and rural areas, according to the newspaper. In Tibet, authorities will spend 200 billion yuan (32.3 billion U.S. dollars) to build a road network centered around the regional capital of Lhasa over the next five to eight years, as well as extend the combined length of the region's highways to over 110,000 km. The construction projects will be funded using multiple channels, including fiscal investment and corporate bonds. The central government has allocated 66.9 billion yuan to build new national- and provincial-level roads, as well as defense highways, the Ministry of Finance announced Friday. The government has earmarked 186.9 billion yuan from its income from vehicle purchase taxes to fund transportation projects so far this year. It plans to spend 4.7 trillion yuan to expand the national road network during the 2013-2030 period, according to the ministry. The National Development and Reform Commission, the country's top economic planner, has recently approved a 8.5-billion-yuan corporate bond issuance by Hubei Provincial Communications Investment Co., Ltd., the largest corporate bond sale of its kind to date, the paper said. The central government vowed last week to speed up reforms concerning investment and financing in the railway sector, including establishing a railway development fund using government investment and social capital.