17,000 old communities in Henan Province will welcome renovation

On September 21, the 20th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 13th Henan Provincial People's Congress heard a special work report from the Provincial People's Government on the transformation of old communities in cities and towns.

According to the report, in recent years, Henan Province has taken the transformation of old communities in cities and towns as an important measure to benefit the people's livelihood, make up for shortcomings, expand domestic demand, and promote consumption. Henan Province will focus on urban and county (chengguan town) residential quarters with strong residents’ change intentions before 2000, where infrastructure and public service facilities are seriously old and lacking, and housing structures are safe.

According to statistics, there were about 17,000 old communities built before 2000 in Henan Province that met the standards for reconstruction, involving 1.9 million households. In 2019, 3402 old communities were included in the scope of central funding support, with about 516,000 households; in 2020, 5480 old communities were included in the scope of central funding support, with about 666,000 households. In this year's government work report, the provincial government included the “reconstruction and quality improvement of old communities in cities and towns” into the province’s ten livelihood key deployments and key advancements, which achieved significant results.

The most important problem to be solved in the transformation of old communities is where the money will come from. Regarding the financing of subsidies, the report shows that since 2019, Henan Province has won a total of 15.14 billion yuan in subsidies from the Ministry of Finance and the National Development and Reform Commission, including 5.5 billion yuan in 2019 and 9.64 billion yuan in 2020. The provincial finance allocated 1.27 billion yuan, and the city and county finance arranged a total of 1.84 billion yuan for transformation funds. The amount of funds allocated by the central government to the renovation of old urban communities in Henan Province ranked first in the country for two consecutive years. As for the issuance of special bonds, up to now, Zhengzhou, Shangqiu, Kaifeng, Xinyang, Puyang, Jiaozuo, and Nanyang have arranged a total of 930 million yuan in special bonds for the transformation of old communities in cities and towns, and 80 million yuan in general bonds, totaling 1.01 billion yuan.