Full Text: Report on China's central and local budgets
(Xinhua)Updated: 2007-03-19 09:17
2. We will strengthen all fiscal and tax policies to support agriculture and benefit farmers to accelerate the building of a new socialist countryside. Building a new socialist countryside is an important component of building a harmonious socialist society and represents a major move to promote balanced development between urban and rural areas and stimulate economic development. We need to effectively implement the policy of giving more to and taking less from farmers and relaxing controls over them. We also need to continue to make solving the problems of agriculture, rural areas and farmers the primary focus of our budget allocations and financial work. A total of 391.7 billion yuan will be allocated from the central budget for agriculture, rural areas and farmers for 2007, 52 billion yuan or 15.3% more than 2006.
First, we will strictly follow the policy of increasing funding. The new increases in government spending will mainly go toward building a new socialist countryside. Guaranteed funding to directly improve the working and living conditions of rural residents will be greater than that of 2006. We will continue to follow the policy of directing increased spending in education, health and culture mainly toward the countryside and also increase the proportion of automobile sales tax revenue spent in the countryside. Income from land transfers, after ensuring adequate funding to pay compensation for land expropriation and resettlement expenses, will mainly be used to fund building of a new socialist countryside, and the proportion of this income used to develop land for agriculture and rural infrastructure will gradually be increased.
Second, we will increase agricultural subsidies. The central government will allocate 5.57 billion yuan in subsidies for growing superior varieties, an increase of 1.42 billion yuan over 2006, and 1.2 billion yuan for purchasing agricultural machinery and tools, an increase of 600 million yuan, in addition to making policies on subsidies and the way in which they are allocated more scientific. We will improve the method for distributing direct subsidies for grain production and general direct subsidies for purchases of agricultural supplies, and work out how to establish a system of general grain subsidies. We will implement an improved policy for setting price floors for grain to stabilize rural income generated from grain production.
Third, we will support the establishment of a basic cost of living allowance system for rural residents across the country. The central government will allocate 3 billion yuan to fund basic cost of living allowances for rural residents to encourage localities to improve systems where they already exist and support efforts in other areas to work out the establishment of a system. Localities will determine the scope of the entitled group and the amount of the basic allowances based on their financial resources and the state of local economic development, and the central government will assist poor areas as needed. Fourth, we will promote the development of modern agriculture. We are putting greater emphasis on expanding production. The central government will allocate 500 million yuan to increase application of modern agricultural technology. We will allocate 900 million yuan in subsidies for trials to test soil to determine the correct fertilizer formula. We will allocate 300 million yuan in subsidies to promote the industrialization of agriculture and development of processing capacity for agricultural products. We will allocate 11.5 billion yuan for comprehensive development of agriculture and guide both local governments and society to increase funding in this area to raise the overall production capacity and productivity of agriculture. We will allocate 1 billion yuan to improve the mechanism of operations run by the local people and subsidized by the government and support the construction of small-scale irrigation and water conservancy projects. We will support the sound development of the livestock industry and promote agricultural restructuring. We will allocate 1.1 billion yuan to support job training for rural laborers so they can find nonagricultural employment and training for farmers so they can learn modern agricultural techniques and become a new type of farmer. The end result will be overall improvement in the quality of the workforce in agricultural production.
Fifth, we will expand the scope of trials of comprehensive rural reform. We
will encourage provincial-level localities with the proper conditions to
undertake trials of comprehensive rural reform at the provincial level, and
encourage those where conditions are not yet right to expand trials at the
municipal or county level. We need to conscientiously work to reduce debt at the
village level, expand the scope of trials to pay off village debt, set up an
incentive and restraint mechanism and give priority to paying off the debt for
public service programs such as compulsory education in rural areas. We need to
fully implement the policy of reforming taxes and fees for state-owned farms.
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