IN BRIEF (Page 10)

Snow loans

Thirteen banks in Jiangxi province have agreed to issue 2.07 billion yuan to 200 enterprises to finance reconstruction after the recent snow storms.

The loans are offered to enterprises that earn foreign exchange through exports, have good profits or are related with reconstruction work but with little liquidity, according to the Jiangxi economic and trade commission.

Coal mine closures

Ninety coal mines with a yearly capacity production of less than 90,000 tons will be closed in Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi province.

The county government will compensate each closure mine with 5 million yuan. The closures aim to reduce the dependence of Taiyuan's economy on coal mines and to concentrate larger mines.

Sun Yat-sen city     

A total of 10 billon yuan will be invested in Zhongshan, in Guangdong province and the birthplace of Sun Yat-sen, by 2010 to improve the city's cultural image.

The investment is divided into various cultural-themed projects, including historical culture, industrial culture, folk customs culture, public culture, ecological culture and Sun Yat-sen culture.

Low-income housing

The Shenyang government in China's northern Liaoning province plans to invest 3.6 billion yuan to solve the problems of low-income families' housing in two years.

The fund will be used to build 3.85 million sq m of houses for low income families. There are currently 128,000 low-income households in Shenyang who have less than 16 sq m living space and a salary of no more than 700 yuan a month.

Information upgrade

China's southern Guangdong province will set aside 200 million yuan each year in the next five years to improve its modern information services.

The business transaction of telecom industry in Guangdong increased 27 percent yearly during the past five years, while the software industry grew 11 percent yearly during the same period. But the modern information service doesn't have enough "driving force", according to Wen Guohui, director of the Guangdong information industry bureau.

The fund aims to accelerate the improvement of the information service industry.

Green funds

China's northern Liaoning province will allocate 150 million yuan each year to 16 counties to protect the environment and conserve water resources.

These counties are required to have more than 667,00 hectares of forestry land or 33,300 hectares of natural forest or large reservoir.

Road improvements

The Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region will build 7,000 km of roads for rural areas to connect all towns with paved roads.

Twenty percent of its rural asphalt roads were damaged during the recent snowstorms, according to the Guangxi communication bureau.

The roads are also poorly maintained and in generally bad condition, says the bureau.

Biogas leader

The number of household biogas pools in Gansu province reached 310,000, equivalent to the use of 1.83 million tons of standard coal.

To make up for the energy shortage that Gansu suffered in rural areas, the province began using biogas. Now, Gansu is the fastest developing biogas using province in China.

(China Daily 03/10/2008 page10)