200 bln yuan needed to fund land reclamation
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China will need to invest at least 200 billion yuan (30.56 billion U.S. dollars) in its efforts to reclaim damaged land masses, an official with the Ministry of Land Resources (MLR) said Tuesday.
China's land reclamation program is in need of heavy funding and the government's investment fell far short of the demand, Wang Shouzhi, head of the MLR's department of policy and regulation, said during a work conference.
Statistics show that China now has around 100 million mu (6.67 million hectares) of land laid to waste by human activity and natural disasters.
"Land reclamation required an average investment of 2,400 yuan per mu during the 2005-2009 period. That means China now needs over 200 billion yuan to address the issue," Wang said.
To date, China has regained over 30 million mu of wasted land in the past two decades, according to Wu Haiyang, director of the Land Consolidation and Rehabilitation Center with the MLR.
He said that the lack of funds and the negligence of local governments were the major obstacles in the reclamation process.
Experts at the meeting called for incentive mechanisms through legislatures to attract investment.
China put the Land Reclamation Regulations in place in March this year in a bid to regain lost land.
