Xinhua was informed by the Ministry of Finance on the 16th that, in order to mobilize financial resources and promote the prevention and control of the epidemic and economic and social development in an integrated manner, the Ministry of Finance has decided to issue the 2020 anti-epidemic special treasury bonds (Phase I) and the 2020 anti-epidemic special treasury bonds (Phase II), the scale of which are both 50 billion yuan, with a maturity period of five years and seven years, respectively.
Industry insiders said the two anti-epidemic special treasury bonds will take the book-entry type treasury bond issuance method, individuals can also buy. According to the arrangement, the two issues of treasury bonds will be tendered on June 18 and listed for trading from June 23 onwards.
What are special treasury bonds?
As the name suggests, anti-epidemic special treasury bonds are not general treasury bonds, but special treasury bonds issued by the central government to cope with the impact of the new coronary pneumonia epidemic, which are not counted as part of the fiscal deficit.
This is a special initiative for a special time. The anti-epidemic special national bonds are mainly used for local public **** health and other infrastructure construction and anti-epidemic related expenditures.
Wen Bin, chief researcher at China Minsheng Bank, told CNN that the special treasury bonds are to serve specific policies and support specific project needs, and have the advantages of specific purpose, large scale, long term and flexible policy.
Why issue?
In layman's terms, fiscal revenues are down, but expenditures have become more, so there is a need to issue special treasury bonds to make up for the funding gap.
Data from the Ministry of Finance show that fiscal revenue fell sharply by 14.5 percent year-on-year from January to April this year due to the impact of the epidemic, tax cuts and fee reductions. Finance Minister Liu Kun expects local finances to cut revenues and increase expenditures by 800 billion to 900 billion yuan this year.
Wen Bin believes that, at present, business operations are still recovering, the tax revenue around a substantial decline, while the fight against the epidemic, rescue enterprises and poor families, the issuance of consumer vouchers and a large number of rigid expenditures to increase the financial existence of a large gap between revenues and expenditures, the issuance of special treasury bonds is to cope with the risk of the new Crown Pneumonia epidemic challenges of the inevitable choice.