Report on the implementation of the central and local budgets for 2014 and on the central and local draft budgets for 2015 (13)

Of this amount, general transfer payments will account for 3.004537 trillion yuan (including 81.5 billion yuan carried forward from previous years), up 12.6%. General transfer payments for equalizing access to basic public services will reach 1.921508 trillion yuan (including 71.5 billion yuan carried forward from previous years), an increase of 14.8%, with transfer payments to some local governments to be increased for their bearing the expenses of implementing the policy of adjusting the salaries of employees of their offices and public institutions. General transfer payments for old revolutionary base areas, areas with concentrations of ethnic minorities, border areas, and poor areas will total 125.565 billion yuan, up 12%. General transfer payments for the basic pension and other purposes will come to 458.184 billion yuan (including 10 billion yuan carried forward from previous years), up 20.1%.

Special transfer payments will come to 2.156434 trillion yuan (including three billion yuan carried forward from previous years), an increase of 8.1%. The principle of either zero-increase or some reduction will be applied to special transfer payments unless otherwise stipulated on in specific policies. The main items that do have increased budgets for special transfer payments include:

 First, budgets for education include 32.75 billion yuan in subsidies for renovating rural schools for compulsory education that are badly in need of improvement, up 6.3%; 14.788 billion yuan of earmarked funding for the initiative to strengthen the quality of modern vocational education, up 24.6%; and 40.492 billion yuan in financial assistance and subsidies to students, an increase of 18.7%.

 Second, budgets for social security and medical and health care include 36.963 billion yuan in subsidies for entitled groups, an increase of 19.9%; 120.768 billion yuan in living allowances and subsidies for people facing financial difficulties, up 7.1%; 49.804 billion yuan in subsidies for public health services, up 8.7%; and 12.56 billion yuan in subsidies to public hospitals (including 3 billion yuan carried over from previous years).

 Third, budgets for energy conservation and environmental protection include 11.55 billion yuan of funding for the prevention and control of air pollution, up 9.5%; 47.85 billion yuan in subsidies for energy conservation and the reduction of emissions, up 40.4%, which is principally because, in accordance with the plan for the reform of oil price-adjusting subsidies, subsidies for petroleum-fueled buses are to be transformed into subsidies for new-energy buses and integrated into the budget for spending on energy conservation and emission reduction; 17.617 billion yuan in subsidies for protecting natural forests, up 21.4%; and 30.865 billion yuan in central government special funding for returning cultivated land to forest, up 8.8%.

 Fourth, budgets for agriculture include 20.158 billion yuan in subsidies for agricultural resource and ecological protection, up 12.1%; 15.245 billion yuan in subsidies for the expansion and servicing of agricultural technologies, up 20.9%; 42.756 billion yuan in subsidies for the construction of farmland irrigation and water conservancy infrastructure and water and soil conservation, an increase of 33.5%; and 35.089 billion yuan in subsidies for the forestry industry, up 15.7%.

 Fifth, a total of 124.3 billion yuan in earmarked funds will be designated for use in financing government-subsidized housing projects in rural areas, an increase of 9.1%.