A woman works at a cashmere production factory in Yinchuan, Northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. Photo: CFP
China is still working on detailed -implementation plans for reforms and aims to achieve clear progress in 15 key areas by 2020, a senior economic official told a news briefing held Wednesday by the State Council Information Office.
The decisions made at the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee offer guidelines, "which cannot include all of the timetable and road map for each reform," said Yang Weimin, vice head of the Office of the Central Leading Group on Finance and Economic -Affairs, a key economic policymaking body under the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.
The Party and the central government need time to work out detailed reform plans including the timetable, road map and specific measures, Yang said.
The plenum decided on 60 reforms covering 15 areas, including economic, political, cultural, societal and ecological aspects.
One of the key areas is a drive to deepen economic reform, to allow markets to play a decisive role in allocating resources.
The document defined the functions that governments at all levels should play in carrying out reforms and mentioned that local governments should strengthen environmental protection efforts, Yang said.
China will increase the weight of factors such as resource consumption, -environmental damage, work safety and local debt in assessing local economic growth, Xinhua News Agency reported Wednesday, citing Xu Shaoshi, head of the National Development and Reform Commission.
The document released Friday also said China will aim to achieve decisive results in reforms in key areas and tasks by 2020.
"I think the 15 areas mentioned in the document are the key areas in which decisive reform results must be achieved," Yang said.
China's upcoming reforms will help ease local government debt burdens, and the risks of local government debt are under control, he emphasized.
China's National Audit Office is conducting an audit of all government debt and its report is expected to come out soon. Its data showed local debt at 10.7 trillion yuan ($1.8 trillion) by end-2010.
Standard Chartered, Fitch and Credit Suisse have estimated local government debt at the equivalent of anywhere between 15 percent and 36 percent of China's GDP.
Speaking of interest rate and -currency rate reforms, Yang said the aim is to let the market play a decisive role in allocating resources, including setting prices for commodities and -exchange and interest rates.
"Among the comprehensive list of planned reforms, financial reforms will be some of the first to be actually implemented," Zhang Zhiwei, chief China economist at Nomura Securities, said in a research note sent to the Global Times on Wednesday.
