Agricultural investment must not be fragmented; coordinated planning is key
Agriculture is the foundation of the national economy and people's livelihood. How the Agriculture Law is implemented bears on important issues such as China's food security and farmers' income growth. From April to September this year, an inspection team of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress inspected the implementation of the Agriculture Law, and recently submitted a report on the inspection findings to the 17th session of the Standing Committee of the 12th National People's Congress for deliberation.
The report shows that in 2014 the national grain output reached 12140.5 billion jin, achieving an “eleven consecutive years of increase.” Output of major agricultural products such as cotton, oilseeds, meat, poultry eggs, aquatic products, vegetables and fruit all ranked first in the world. The per capita net income of rural residents rose from 5919 yuan in 2010 to 9892 yuan in 2014.
These achievements would have been impossible without increased investment in “agriculture, rural areas and farmers.” According to statistics, from 2010 to 2014, national general budget expenditure on agriculture, forestry and water conservancy totaled 57272 billion yuan, with an average annual growth of 14.6%. In 2015, the national budget allocated 16953 billion yuan for agriculture, forestry and water conservancy expenditure, an increase of 11.4% over the previous year.
However, although the amount of fiscal support for agriculture at all levels has continued to increase, there is still a relatively large gap compared with the needs of agricultural development, and the support mechanism needs to be improved. The report points out that existing support for agriculture suffers from problems such as irrational structure, dispersed use and low efficiency, and the problem of agriculture-related subsidy programs being “numerous, wide-ranging and small in amount” is prominent.
Regarding agricultural subsidies being too fragmented, Li Ye, a member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, spoke from personal experience: “There are now more than 20 kinds of agriculture-related subsidies. For some subsidies each household receives only a little over 10 yuan, and villagers have to trek over mountains and hills to collect the money. Ordinary people feel it is not worth it at all. I suggest that the specific ways of support be appropriately changed, with more support for collective and basic projects.”
“At present, various types of funds are managed by multiple departments, making it difficult to concentrate financial resources to solve prominent problems, and it is also very easy for the same project to be repeatedly applied for among different departments.” In this regard, committee member Che Guangtie suggested further optimizing the structure of agricultural investment and reasonably increasing the proportion of production-oriented agricultural investment. At the same time, further strengthen the mechanism for integrating agriculture-supporting funds, and around key project construction, bundle various types of funds for use, invest them in a concentrated way, and effectively improve the efficiency of fund use.
On how to optimize investment, Feng Leping, who comes from a farmers' professional cooperative, believes that agriculture-supporting funds must not be “sprinkled like sesame salt.” In the future, the integration of agriculture-related funds should be tilted toward new types of specialized agricultural operating entities, such as leading enterprises, professional cooperatives and large grain-growing households, and toward more key industries and fields.
In this regard, the inspection team suggested further optimizing the investment structure and increasing the total amount of investment. It is necessary to deeply advance the integration of agriculture-related funds, ensure that funds are concentrated on the key links and key areas of agricultural modernization, focus support on agricultural infrastructure construction and agricultural structural adjustment, and tilt newly added subsidies toward important agricultural products such as grain, new types of agricultural operating entities and major grain-producing counties.