At a meeting in December to chart the course for 2022, top leaders called for front loading infrastructure investment to help cushion the slowdown, which looks set to worsen in the first half. “We need to step up infrastructure investment and stabilize the property sector,” Yao Jingyuan, an adviser to the cabinet, told Reuters. Local governments, meanwhile, have unveiled their own infrastructure projects, including in Shanghai and the provinces of Sichuan, Jiangsu，Zhejiang, Anhui and Hebei. The finance ministry has already issued 1.46 trillion yuan in its 2022 advance quota for local government special bonds, on top of 1.2 trillion yuan in unspent bond funds from the fourth quarter of 2021 – part of the 2021 quota of 3.65 trillion yuan. But few analysts expect a major turnaround in the sector soon, with HSBC forecasting zero to 2% growth in property investment this year.

Source: MetroXpress January 27, 2022 22:49 UTC