(ATF) China saw 400 new public-private partnership (PPP) projects registered in the first seven months of the year, according to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).
PPPs act as collaborative investment models between government and private companies.
Chinese authorities have been exploring funding infrastructure and public works through PPP models in recent years, aiming to reduce local government debts and provide new opportunities to private capital.
Some 134 of the projects were related to urban infrastructure, data showed.
Other sectors including agriculture, forestry, water conservation, social development, transport and environmental protection also reported new PPP projects in the period.
So far, a total of 7,277 PPP projects have been registered with a national monitoring platform.
Hengquin port
Meanwhile, in other news, a new port to facilitate travel between Macau and Zhuhai in southern China’s Guangdong Province, was officially put into use on Tuesday. The move aims to boost the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
Dubbed a “super passage,” the main working area of the Hengqin port has a total floor area of 450,000 square meters, the equivalent to 63 football fields.
It has a designed daily capacity for 222,000 passengers and aims to ease the pressure on Gongbei Port, while increasing the daily capacity for passenger flow between Guangdong and Macao.
Gongbei Port has long been the main passenger channel between Zhuhai and Macau. In 2019, the port saw a total of 145 million passengers, ranking first in China for eight consecutive years.
However, the Gongbei Port has been running far beyond its designed capacity, resulting in a series of problems such as prolonged queuing times and slow customs clearance procedures.
As a flagship project of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Hengqin Port significantly simplified clearance procedures.
