OREANDA-NEWS. May 07, 2014. China Development Bank (CDB) signed a "Development Financing Memorandum of Cooperation for the Joint Promotion of Liaoning's Shantytown Reforms" with the Liaoning Provincial Government in Shenyang, this is a move that aims to accelerate Liaoning's shantytown reforms through the utilization of development financing, and thus one that is fully in line with the spirit of the 43rd Executive Meeting of the State Council.Present at the signing ceremony were Mr. Xue Heng, the vice governer of Liaoning province, and Mr. Zhang Xuguang, the vice president of China Development Bank.

Under this memorandum, and based on the principle of mutual support and win-win cooperation, the two parties will take advantage of the Liaoning Provincial Government's strength in organization and coordination and CDB's strength in long-term investment and financing, focus on building a cooperation mechanism and designing a financing model with the objectives of Liaoning's shantytown reforms in mind, strive to create good investment, financing and market environments through advance planning, policy guidance and financing, and facilitate the successful completion of shantytown reforms in the province.

Liaoning is one of China's older industrial bases, and the shantytown areas stituated along the city fringes and near the mining areas were once a major livelihood problem for the province.As the only financial institution supporting the province, CDB released its first batch of Rmb3 billion in loans for Liaoning's shantytown reforms, which gave nearly 1.2 million shantytown residents in 14 cities access to well-heated and spacious housing, and paved the way for development financing to serve as a support for affordable housing projects.Over the past 10 years, CDB has provided loans to support the first, second and third phases of Liaoning's shantytown reform projects as well as reform projects for its industrial and mining slums. In total, the bank released shantytown reform loans to the tune of Rmb16.8, which helped Liaoning province to carry out reforms for contiguous urban shantytowns covering an area of 33.6 million square meters, relocate 870,000 residents, and provide support to more than 260,000 low-income earners.

The successful cooperation on shantytown reforms between the Liaoning Provincial Government and CDB was a major innovation in the field of public service infrastructure, the partnership allowed the government's organizational strength and CDB's financing strength to come together and successfully break bottlenecks in economic and social development, it also served as a standard model for the government with respect to the use of financing instruments to address livelihood problems.Liaoning's shantytown reforms have now become one of its hallmark livelihood projects and the province's "reform experience and spirit" will have a far-reaching impact on China.

A representative of CDB's Liaoning branch indicated that the bank's next step will be to support shantytown reforms, which serve as an important driving force for the strengthening of reforms, expand the bank's efforts in ensuring both quality and quantity with respect to support for shantytown reform tasks, support shantytown work concepts through scientific planning, and thereby gain experience in building diversified, sustainable safeguard mechanisms for urbanization funds.