NDRC official encourages private capital to invest in agriculture
At the press conference held in April this year to launch the compilation of the “13th Five-Year Plan”, Xu Lin, director of the Development Planning Department of the National Development and Reform Commission, specifically mentioned the need to accelerate agricultural modernization. On August 2, at the Modern Agriculture and Financial Services Innovation Summit held in Chengdu, Fang Yan, deputy director of the Rural Economy Department of the National Development and Reform Commission, said, “The next step in agricultural development and investment in agriculture is a very serious issue facing everyone.”
On how to develop agriculture during the “13th Five-Year Plan” period, Fang Yan proposed that, first, the supply of bulk agricultural products must be ensured. China's rice production is concentrated in the north, but a large amount of consumption is in the south, which brings about the problem of transferring grain from the north to the south. This increases consumption costs and increases the cost of grain production, so during the “13th Five-Year Plan” period we need to study the issues of regional balance and variety balance in grain.
Second, during the “13th Five-Year Plan” period, sustainable agricultural development must be taken into consideration, and efforts must be devoted to solving the problem of agricultural environmental pollution.
He also proposed that in 1998 rural fixed asset investment accounted for 19.2% of total social fixed asset investment, and by 2012 this proportion had dropped to 13%. This reflects that the sources of rural investment funds are relatively narrow, relying entirely on government funding, and that the growth of rural asset investment is very slow. We need the involvement of a large number of private financial institutions. In the future, we will introduce some measures to attract social funds from all sides to participate in agricultural construction, and this will be a theme of the “13th Five-Year Plan”.