China will make more efforts to mitigate the dangers of debt stemming from financing platforms, Premier Li Qiang said at a meeting on Friday focused on mitigating the dangers of public debt.
China will resolutely block the trail of abnormal and concealed debts and strictly avoid the threat of new debts, Li said.
The Ministry of Commerce said on Friday that foreign investment in China fell 19. 9% in the first two months of 2024, from January-February last year, to 215 billion yuan ($30 billion).
China on Tuesday unveiled new measures to curb a slowdown in foreign investment, adding to a growing market and relaxing some rules.
Foreign companies have irked China since it followed ultra-strict COVID restrictions during the pandemic and then abandoned them in late 2022, as considerations about the business environment, a fragile economic recovery and emerging geopolitical tensions with the West weighed on confidence.
A series of protracted regulatory measures in sectors ranging from generation to schooling have rattled domestic and foreign investors, raising concerns about policy transparency in China.
U. S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said last year that U. S. corporations had told her China was “impossible to invest in. “
In 2023, direct investment in China reached 8% year-on-year.
Of foreign investment in the first two months, 71. 44 billion yuan, or one-third of the total, went to China’s high-tech industries and high-tech manufacturing, the ministry said.
Foreign investment in China’s structural sector rose 43. 6 percent year-on-year, while investment in the wholesale and retail industry sectors rose 14. 5 percent, it added.
In turn, China’s central government accelerated spending at the beginning of the year, a sign that it is taking on more day-to-day monetary tasks for the economy and avoiding aggravating local government debt risks, Bloomberg reported.
Its government spending rose 14 percent year-on-year to 482. 8 billion yuan ($66. 8 billion) in January and February combined, the fastest generation rate in five years, according to Ministry of Finance data.
Bloomberg said Beijing was gradually transferring responsibility for supporting economic expansion to the central government, from local officials, a way to get to the point of investment while also defusing local debt risks.
Local governments are suffering after a housing crisis cut a significant chunk of profits from land sales and a slowing economy hit tax revenues.
The latest insights show that Beijing intends to “support expansion and at the same time prevent risks,” said Xing Zhaopeng, senior China strategist in Australia.
The central and local governments spent about 700 billion yuan in the first two months on problems similar to agriculture, forestry and irrigation, as well as on the progress of urban and rural communities. This represents a 22% increase over last year.
Separately, China’s securities regulator has introduced on-site inspections of some mutual fund companies as part of efforts to control the sector, which has puzzled fund managers.
The securities watchdog, headed by its new chairman Wu Qing, pledged a week ago to establish a “manual-type” style of supervision for China’s $3. 8 trillion mutual fund industry, according to Reuters.
The most recent inspection circular, carried out without authorization through branches of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CRVS), focused on the Chinese Communist Party’s day-to-day operations, education and strengthening the internal functions of the Chinese Communist Party, the 21st Century Business Herald reported on Friday. He did not call on asset managers to be inspected.
Reacting to a question from Reuters, the CSRC said: “It’s a normal on-site inspection that we do every year. “
CSRC branches have inspected fund corporations founded outside their regions, which, according to the article, can prevent local interference. Recently, regulators have cracked down on computer-controlled “quantitative” private funds.
The chairman of the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZONE), Walid Gamal El-Din, said that in the period from July 1, 2023 to March 21, 2024, 127 projects worth $2. 8 billion were achieved.
He added that 61 projects obtained final approval, with a foreign investment rate of 49%, while 66 projects obtained initial approval in the same period, with foreign investment accounting for 39% of the total.
The implementation of these projects is expected to generate more than 22,000 opportunities for direct and oblique tasks, Gamal El-Din emphasized, noting that from January 2024 to today, 37 projects have been contracted with an investment cost of $894 million.
The president revealed these figures after a meeting with Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly.
Aramco Chairman and CEO Amin H. Nasser said the Saudi company’s commitment to China’s long-term energy security “is set in stone,” adding that the oil giant will be a “spouse of first resort in China’s economic development. “
“All of us at Aramco greatly appreciate China’s phenomenal achievements in recent decades, especially its remarkable economic expansion and ability to triumph over many challenges,” Nasser said in a speech at the China Development Forum on Sunday.
He added that Aramco “is proud to be one of China’s most reliable energy suppliers. “
“Aramco’s commitment to China’s long-term energy security, which will drive this wonderful nation’s long-term expansion and progress, is set in stone. It is also evident to us that with China’s high-quality progress, even more investment opportunities are opening up. and cooperation are emerging,” Nasser said in his speech.
He said that while power remains a strategic pillar of the strong relationship between the two sides, Aramco’s long-term vision goes far beyond simply making an investment in power.
Nasser sees five other key spaces where opportunities for mutually beneficial investment and cooperation are expected to be enormous. These spaces include chemicals and low-carbon energy.
“We are just investors and China is just a market for us. We need to be a first-rate partner in China’s economic development, as new opportunities are obviously emerging,” he said.
“I have no doubt that raising our relations to unsuspected levels would encourage China’s efforts to meet the hopes and ambitions of its people,” he added.
The secretary-general of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Haitham Al-Ghais, again criticized the International Energy Agency (IEA), naming it and stating that calls to abandon oil are “false” and “unrealistic. “
He expects oil to continue to play a critical role in global energy markets for decades to come.
Al-Ghais’ remarks to the Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) are in line with a letter signed through U. S. Republican lawmakers to the International Energy Agency’s executive director, Fatih Birol, saying the company has “deviated from its core mission” of safeguarding energy security. An “animator” of the green transition.
Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser also described the phase-out of oil and fuel as a fantasy.
Speaking in Houston last week at the CERAWeek conference, he said: “A reset of the transition strategy is urgently needed and my proposal is as follows. We abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and fuel and invest in those sectors appropriately, taking into account realistic demands of assumptions.
In an interview with KUNA, Al-Ghais warned of serious dangers if oil production or use were to stop. He expects oil to continue to play a critical and critical role in global force markets in the coming years and decades, highlighting its critical role in a must-have daily activities around the world, adding transportation, travel, power generation, and manufacturing.
As for the main sectors that will be affected by the disappearance of oil, Al-Ghais said that the impact will increase on means of transport, whether air, sea or land, emergency vehicles such as ambulances, food production, packaging. and storage, as well as medicines, hospital equipment and medical supplies.
He continues: “If oil were to disappear, so would the production of renewable energies, such as the manufacture of wind turbines and solar panels, since their production is related to petroleum products. “
Al-Ghais further warned of catastrophic repercussions, as millions of people will lose their jobs, while commercial output and global economic expansion will slow. It will also exacerbate the energy poverty crisis in many countries around the world, at a time when millions of other people lack the most basic electricity needs, such as lighting, he noted.
OPEC’s secretary-general is under pressure that the organization now has broad voices calling for rationality in finding realistic solutions, at a time when false and unscientific data on the issue is being disseminated.
In this regard, he referred to reports that oil demand is expected to peak until 2030.
“Unfortunately, it is on ideological grounds” that drive the abandonment of oil, fuels and fossil fuels in general.
Al-Ghais expects the economy to double in length by 2045.
“All these advances demonstrate that the world will need everyone to have energy sources, as energy demand is expected to increase by up to 23 percent and global oil demand will reach 116 million barrels per day by 2045. “He said. .
The General Council of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has unanimously elected Saqer bin Abdullah Al-Moqbel, Permanent Representative of Saudi Arabia to the WTO, as Chair of the Dispute Settlement Body for 2024-2025.
Al-Moqbel, with 20 years of diplomatic and legal experience, most recently chairs the Trade Policy Review Body and coordinates the Arab Group, among other responsibilities.
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has awarded the “Hilal-i-Quaid-i-Azam” medal to the Director General of the Saudi Fund for Development (SFD), Sultan bin Abdulrahman Al-Marshad.
On the sidelines of the visit, Al-Marshad met with Pakistani Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif.