Make up the Occupied Arable Land: MSLR Warns 7 Provinces and Cities

As informed from the Ministry of State Land Resource (MSLR) the latest statistic shows that seven provinces and cities failed to achieve balance between the occupied cultivated lands and their re-supplement in 1999. To ensure the realization of this balance, MSLR issued a document recently, reiterating that every construction project occupying cultivated lands must accordingly make up the land used. Otherwise, the land administrative organs will not approve the applications for the utilization of lands for construction by project-units whose expenditure needed for replenishing lands hasn't been guaranteed.

According to the leaders of the Cultivated Land Protection Section of MSLR, the area of cultivated lands across China decreased by 12.625 million mu in 1999, which, being offset with the increase of 6.076 million mu of arable land, the net decrease in cultivated area is 6.549 million mu. It is 2.629 million mu of land outstripping the corresponding decrease of 3.92 million in 1998. Last year, seven provinces or cities failed to realize the objective of making the occupation and replenishment of cultivated lands in balance. In this circumstance, MSLR issued a notice on strengthening the work of replenishing cultivated land to make up the occupied land. It is required that the land administrative organs of the said provinces and cities adopt suitable measures to ensure the balance, and still to fill up the balance gap of 1999 by working out the specific plans, which is scheduled to be submitted to the ministry in May.

As emphasized by the notice it is obliged that the construction unit must see to it that the exact same area must be complemented for the approved projects of non-farm construction that has occupied cultivated lands. It affirms that whether the balance is achieved within the precincts of province, autonomous region or municipality under the Central Government the people's government at the corresponding level is liable to take up the responsibility for it and the area and soil quality must match that of the occupied land. The outcome of examination should be subject to the reexamination of land administrative organs at provincial-level, while the provincial level should submit the land-use approved by the state council to MLR for the record. The construction unit should readjust the engineering budget with added investment for land compensation. For those units without the fund for this adjustment, the land administrative organ will not accept their applications for land use.

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