Infrastructure construction back in full swing as work resumes: Minister

Transport authorities are speeding up work resumption and channeling investment to boost infrastructure construction in the transport sector, the top transport official said on Tuesday.

Li Xiaopeng, minister of transport, told a news conference organized by the State Council Information Office that 99.7 percent of existing construction projects in the transport sector have resumed work and the ministry is making efforts to streamline procedures for approving new projects.

The ministry will guide local departments to kick off a number of new key projects in line with national strategies, as well as the 13th and 14th Five-Year Plans, he said.

A pool of new projects with total investment of 800 billion yuan has been formed, and construction of these projects could kick off soon once preliminary work is done, he said.

In 2019, a total of 3.2451 trillion yuan of fixed assets investment was made in the transport sector, seeing 8,000 kilometers of new railways put into operation and 320,000 km of roads newly built or renovated. Some world-class projects, such as Beijing Daxing International Airport and Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway, were also put into use last year.