CAAC subsidized 9.3 billion RMB for airport construction to assist the regional aviation development

The Civil Aviation Administration of China has budgeted 11.7 billion Yuan this year for airport constructions, with most of the funds being applied to airport construction subsidies. Jointly with Finance Department; the CAAC recently formulated four related policies namely small and medium sized airport subsidies, branch line flight subsidies, interest-reduction loans for basic constructions and investment allowances, and capital management for local airport construction items. The airport construction subsidy fund for 2008 was 9.3 billion Yuan. Area administrations of civil aviation and the local finance departments are now working on the budget reports of those construction items and the captioned funds will be released to local finance departments once those reported items are approved by the CAAC and verified by the Finance Department. There was more than 1 billion Yuan arranged to subsidize small & medium sized airports. 122 and 123 airports were subsidized respectively in 2006 and 2007, 70% of the subsidies were spent on the airports in the Mid-west area. Subsidies on branch line flights were more than 0.5 billion Yuan. There were 232 and 258 branch lines compensated respectively in 2006 and 2007, 70%-80% of the subsidies were focused on branch lines in the Southwest, Xinjiang, the Northwest and Northeast areas. Moreover, interest-reduction loans for basic construction has amounted to over 200 million Yuan in the last two years and interests of bank loans for 30 basic construction projects of civil aviation were compensated. The size of the loans of these projects has reached 13.2 billion Yuan.