Box 1. Local government investment corporations (LICs)
The local government financial platforms (difang zhengfu rongzi pingtai) referred to in the 2009 document jointly issued by the People’s Bank of China and the China Banking Regulatory Commission are commonly called local investment corporations (LICs). Since the late 1980s, local governments – mostly at the municipal and provincial levels – have been creating corporate entities to undertake the task of raising funds to finance public investment, and they are variously called urban development investment corporations (UDICs), highway or transport corporations, and the like. These corporations were an innovation to allow local governments to work around a central contradiction in the intergovernmental fiscal system in China, under which local governments are assigned the primary responsibility for the provision of public services including infrastructure but are not given the right to borrow, nor are they assigned enough revenues to take on this responsibility. LICs were initially created as financially independent, single-purpose entities often for the purpose of taking on loans from international financial institutions. Being financially independent restricted their undertakings to those with the capacity for debt servicing and repayment, and LICs were prevalent in the construction and operation of toll roads, power companies, water companies and utilities.
A breakthrough came in 1988, when Shanghai created the first broad-based investment corporation to undertake investment in urban infrastructure, the General Corporation of Shanghai Municipal Property (SMPD), and gave it the mission to co-ordinate and provide for the construction of facilities such as water supply, sewerage, roads, utility hook-ups, etc. To finance these tasks, the corporation was assigned earmarked revenues from the municipal budget and authorised to borrow from banks and to issue corporate bonds (see Figure 7 for a depiction of the corporation’s sources and use of funds). Its creation made possible a quantum leap in the financing available for investments in infrastructure to support urban renewal and expansion in Shanghai.
Over time, the model gradually spread to other municipalities, and LICs have come to play a key role in financing urbanisation in many localities. As they became more accepted, they have also evolved to be less strictly financially separated from government, and broadened in scope. Typically, the LICs raise and bundle together bank loans and other financing, using a variety of municipal assets including budgetary and off-budget revenues as equity and collateral. Increasingly, with urbanisation causing an increase in land values, land has become the principal asset backing LICs, and municipal governments have also increasingly relied on off-budget receipts from land lease sales to finance debt service in these LICs.
Box 1. Local government investment corporations (LICs)
The local government financial platforms (difang zhengfu rongzi pingtai) referred to in the 2009 document jointly issued by the People’s Bank of China and the China Banking Regulatory Commission are commonly called local investment corporations (LICs). Since the late 1980s, local governments – mostly at the municipal and provincial levels – have been creating corporate entities to undertake the task of raising funds to finance public investment, and they are variously called urban development investment corporations (UDICs), highway or transport corporations, and the like. These corporations were an innovation to allow local governments to work around a central contradiction in the intergovernmental fiscal system in China, under which local governments are assigned the primary responsibility for the provision of public services including infrastructure but are not given the right to borrow, nor are they assigned enough revenues to take on this responsibility. LICs were initially created as financially independent, single-purpose entities often for the purpose of taking on loans from international financial institutions. Being financially independent restricted their undertakings to those with the capacity for debt servicing and repayment, and LICs were prevalent in the construction and operation of toll roads, power companies, water companies and utilities.
A breakthrough came in 1988, when Shanghai created the first broad-based investment corporation to undertake investment in urban infrastructure, the General Corporation of Shanghai Municipal Property (SMPD), and gave it the mission to co-ordinate and provide for the construction of facilities such as water supply, sewerage, roads, utility hook-ups, etc. To finance these tasks, the corporation was assigned earmarked revenues from the municipal budget and authorised to borrow from banks and to issue corporate bonds (see Figure 7 for a depiction of the corporation’s sources and use of funds). Its creation made possible a quantum leap in the financing available for investments in infrastructure to support urban renewal and expansion in Shanghai.
Over time, the model gradually spread to other municipalities, and LICs have come to play a key role in financing urbanisation in many localities. As they became more accepted, they have also evolved to be less strictly financially separated from government, and broadened in scope. Typically, the LICs raise and bundle together bank loans and other financing, using a variety of municipal assets including budgetary and off-budget revenues as equity and collateral. Increasingly, with urbanisation causing an increase in land values, land has become the principal asset backing LICs, and municipal governments have also increasingly relied on off-budget receipts from land lease sales to finance debt service in these LICs.
การแปล กรุณารอสักครู่..
