The economy entered the second half, and infrastructure investment began to accelerate.

Carding found that in the last two months, the National Development and Reform Commission has intensively approved 12 infrastructure projects with a total investment of 284.9 billion yuan.

Zhang Jun, chief economist of Morgan Stanley Huaxin Securities, said in an interview that if there is no sharp decline in real estate investment, it is estimated that the cumulative year-on-year growth rate of infrastructure in the second half of the year may rebound to about 25%, thereby driving the growth of fixed asset investment The speed returned to about 10% at the end of the year, which was roughly the same as last year.

Development and Reform Commission intensively approves a large number of infrastructure projects

In the past two months, the National Development and Reform Commission has again pressed the "button" for intensive approval of infrastructure projects. According to rough statistics, within two months of July and August, the National Development and Reform Commission approved a total of 12 infrastructure projects, involving funds of 284.9 billion yuan.

It is worth noting that these projects are basically transportation infrastructure projects, including 6 highway projects, 2 high-speed rail projects, and 3 urban rail transit projects such as Luoyang, Guiyang and Chengdu.

However, this is only part of the investment in transportation infrastructure. Data from the Ministry of Transport show that in the second half of the year, there will be as much as one trillion yuan of investment space for transportation infrastructure investment to be released.

According to the latest data disclosed by the Ministry of Transport, from January to July, the total investment in fixed assets for highway and water transportation nationwide was 962.8 billion yuan. However, according to the plan of the Ministry of Transportation, the investment target for highway and water transportation construction this year is 1.8 trillion yuan. This means that more than 800 billion yuan of investment will still be released in the coming months.

In addition, the planned investment scale for the railway this year is 800 billion yuan, but according to data from the Ministry of Transport, from January to July, railways completed a fixed-asset investment of 369.7 billion yuan, which is currently less than half the target quota.

"In the second half of the year, the growth rate of private investment, manufacturing investment and real estate may continue to decline. Infrastructure investment must increase its strength to steadily grow," said a macro analyst at Zheshang Securities.

Since this year, investment in real estate and manufacturing has been sluggish. From January to July, the growth rate of real estate investment dropped to 5.3%, while the growth rate of investment in manufacturing industry was only 3%, while infrastructure investment maintained a high growth rate of 19.6% during the same period. Infrastructure investment became the key to stable investment.

"From the perspective of the trend, infrastructure investment in the second half of the year will continue to maintain a rapid growth rate." Pan Jiancheng, deputy director of the Information Boom Center of the National Bureau of Statistics, said in an interview that in addition to increasing the approval of infrastructure projects by the National Development and Reform Commission, Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei are integrated. Relevant projects such as chemical industry and the Yangtze River Economic Belt will accelerate their implementation in the second half of the year. Therefore, the contribution of infrastructure investment to overall investment will remain strong in the second half of the year.

PPP may become the main driver of infrastructure investment

However, there are also many problems to maintain a high growth rate of infrastructure investment.

Zhang Jun said, "In addition to the projects approved by the National Development and Reform Commission, the most important thing is whether the investment in infrastructure can be achieved. The availability of funds is the most important factor. In the past two years, there have been a lot of projects approved by the National Development and Reform Commission but they have been stranded because of lack of funds."

Judging from the data of the National Bureau of Statistics, the current rate of funding availability has slowed. Data show that from January to July, the funds in place for investment in fixed assets increased by 7.5% year-on-year, a growth rate of 0.5 percentage points lower than that in the first six months.

Zhang Jun believes that the key is to look at monetary and fiscal policies. The problem with monetary policy is the lack of effective loan demand in addition to real estate-related development loans and mortgage loans. The central bank's headache is how to introduce liquidity into the real economy. "I think it is still necessary to start the approved infrastructure projects by increasing the fiscal expenditure. Once the project is started, the subsequent funding requirements can be solved from the bank's supporting project loans, which will also solve the problem of credit idling to a certain extent. . "

In fact, in order to solve the financing problem, the government has turned its focus to PPP to attract private investment. Therefore, PPP is expected to become the main driver of infrastructure investment in the second half of the year.

On July 13, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Communications, and the China Railway Corporation jointly issued the Medium- and Long-Term Railway Network Plan, which mentioned that market access should be relaxed, local governments should be encouraged to be supported, and society including private investment and foreign investment should be widely attracted. Capital participates in railway investment construction; On August 10, the Development and Reform Commission issued the "Notice on the Approval Method for New Government and Social Capital Cooperation Projects of the National Expressway Network" to actively promote the adoption of the PPP model in the field of highway transportation.

"Under the circumstances of tax cuts and economic downturn, the fiscal revenue of local governments has decreased. Therefore, the driving force of government funds alone is very limited, and private capital must be introduced through the PPP model." Pan Jiancheng said.

However, he believes that in the process of implementing the PPP model, government funds must play the role of "four or two pounds" and take appropriate measures to protect the interests of private capital, such as discounting interest rates and issuing bonds. Otherwise, the enthusiasm of private capital cannot be mobilized.