China will increase the share of revenue from land transfers diverted to agriculture and rural areas, in an effort to help finance rural rejuvenation.

The General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council made the statement in Guidelines on Adjusting the Distribution of Land Transfer Revenues to Support Rural Rejuvenation on Sept 23, 2020.

The guideline said that a national goal should be set based on overall consideration of fiscal capabilities, land transfer revenues and development demands in agriculture and rural areas across regions. And, local authorities should decide their own yearly goals and implementation steps, and carry out the reform at a proper pace.

It also urged a refined mechanism to manage and prudently use the revenues and higher efficiencies in revenue utilization.

Local governments should expropriate, store up and supply lands at an appropriate pace and ensure land transfer revenues keep steady, and city and county governments, especially the latter ones, will be entitled to the revenue utilization.

According to the guideline, the revenues will be mainly used to build high-quality farmlands, farming and water resource facilities; improve the living environment, and protect farmlands.

Revenue and expenditure accounting methods, and management and monitoring of money used for agricultural and rural areas should be improved, it added.

Related departments should realize how important and urgent it is to divert more land transfer revenues to support rural rejuvenation, and formulate detailed measures by the end of 2020, it said.

And a national information platform for revealing land transfer revenues and expenditures should be established to conduct real-time monitoring.