Moody's: Infrastructure investment to rebound next year

Infrastructure investment will regain pace next year in the wake of the country's economic transformation and the new government assuming its post, Moody's Investors Service said on Thursday.

Ivan Chung, a senior analyst with Moody's who specializes in infrastructure finance, said that China's demand for infrastructure investment will remain robust in the fourth quarter and next year, with economic growth back on track. Growth of accumulated fixed-asset investment was 20.5 percent in the first nine months of the year, compared with 24.9 percent in the same period last year.

According to the Ministry of Transport, investment growth in China's transport system has rebounded in the third quarter to a 2.5 percent increase, from a 7.4 percent and a 5.4 percent decline in the previous two quarters. Growth in October was even higher at 21.3 percent.

"We estimate that the investment growth will maintain its modest recovery in the last two months of the year, making the total transport investment in 2012 on par with that of the previous year," said He Jiangzhong, spokesman with the ministry, at a press conference on Thursday.

Total fixed-asset investment was 1.45 trillion yuan ($232.7 billion) in 2011.

"Undoubtedly, an increase in investment demand in the months to come will come from the assumption of the new local governments' officials and a traditional investment fever at the end of the year," Chung said.

But more importantly, Chung said, it will be a result of the changes in the social and economic structure of the world's second-largest economy.

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