Key manufacturing projects to get funding assistance

More effort will be made to raise funds for key manufacturing projects, after China made a series of breakthroughs in equipment development for aviation and other sectors, a senior official at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said.

In an exclusive interview with China Daily, MIIT planning department director Luo Wen said: "We will build a platform for cooperation among government institutions, banks and enterprises, on which we will recommend key projects to banking institutions."

Luo said that the China Development Bank, State Development and Investment Corp, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and China CITIC Bank are all on the list of financing partners.

The move is part of MIIT's broad efforts to promote investment in the manufacturing sector, which China aims to upgrade with cutting-edge technologies such as robotics and big data.

The world's second largest economy wants to tackle bottlenecks in 10 sectors including machinery manufacturing, railway, aviation and aerospace.

"Equipment is the core of the manufacturing industry. We will ramp up resources to focus on a group of projects which have good foundations so that breakthroughs are likely to be accomplished within two to three years," Luo said.