As an important aspect of stabilizing growth, stabilizing investment is stepping up its plans for "first movers". On January 13, Henan tendered the issuance of 2022 local special bonds (phases 1 to 9), officially kicking off the 2022 local government special bond issuance. In addition, more than 10 places including Zhejiang, Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Shandong have announced the issuance plans of local government bonds in the first quarter.

A number of experts said that the fiscal policy in 2022 will be "strengthening ahead", so as to give full play to the supporting role of fiscal policy in stabilizing growth. It is expected that local government special bonds will remain strong in 2022, and the total scale may not be lower than the level in 2021. The growth rate of infrastructure construction in the first quarter and the whole year of 2022 will also have a bright performance.

At the end of 2021, the Ministry of Finance issued a new special debt limit of 1.46 trillion yuan to local governments in advance in 2022. Compared with the issuance of new special bonds in March 2021, the issuance time of new special bonds in 2022 is significantly earlier.

According to the disclosed information, the total size of this batch of special bonds in Henan is 38.201 billion yuan, which are mainly used for urban and rural development, social undertakings, and shantytown reconstruction.

Feng Qiaobin, deputy director of the Macroeconomic Research Department of the Development Research Center of the State Council, analyzed that 2022 will usher in a period of relative fiscal expansion. Compared with 2021, fiscal expenditure in 2022 will maintain a certain intensity, and will "make efforts ahead", and the progress of expenditure will be further accelerated to give full play to the supporting role of fiscal policy in stabilizing growth.

Feng Qiaobin further stated that it is expected that the scale of Chinese government spending and debt will increase in 2022. In particular, local government special bonds will remain strong, and the total scale may not be lower than the level in 2021. The huge amount of funds released from this will be mainly used to expand government spending, increase government investment, and carry out infrastructure investment moderately ahead of schedule.

The National Standing Committee held recently made it clear that the 1.2 trillion yuan of local government special bond funds issued in the fourth quarter of 2021 should be allocated to specific projects as soon as possible in accordance with the requirement that funds follow the project. We will promptly issue the special bonds issued in 2022, make good use of the investment in the central budget, leverage more social investment, and strive to create more physical workload in the first quarter.

A large number of infrastructure investments have been advanced ahead of schedule. On January 4, Deyang City, Sichuan Province announced the centralized start of major projects in the first quarter of 2022, with 63 projects and a total investment of 41.2 billion yuan; In the past 7 years, Sichuan has held the earliest time for the centralized construction of key projects. Subsequently, major projects were intensively started in many places. On January 10, Guangxi started and completed 649 major projects at the autonomous region and municipal levels, with a total investment of 331.9 billion yuan. The projects cover industrial development, infrastructure, social and people's livelihood and other fields.

The accelerated issuance of local government bonds is expected to bring a significant boost to infrastructure, especially "new infrastructure". Zhu Jianfang, chief economist of CITIC Securities, predicts that infrastructure construction will achieve high-single-digit growth in the first quarter of 2022, and the growth rate of infrastructure construction throughout the year will also have a bright performance, which is significantly better than the same period last year and the annual growth rate (excluding the base).

Lian Ping, chief economist and dean of the Research Institute of Zhixin Investment, said that with the strong promotion of policies and the effective investment of fiscal and financial resources, infrastructure investment in 2022 will perform well, and the growth of infrastructure investment is expected to reach 8%. . Editor / Xu Shengpeng