On January 29, the Decision of the State Council of the CPC Central Committee on Accelerating the Reform and Development of Water Resources was published as the No. 1 document of this year's Central Committee, which is the eighth Central Committee No. 1 document guiding agricultural and rural work since the new century. It is also the first comprehensive document on Water Resources issued by the Party Central Committee and the State Council since the founding of New China 62 years ago.

The document pointed out that "multi-channel fund-raising, strive to the next 10 years, the average annual investment in water resources of the whole society is twice as high as in 2010", "10% of the land transfer income is used for farmland water conservancy construction" and "widely attract social funds to invest in water resources". Most experts said that the central document No. 1 contained relatively high gold content, which really solved the problem of water resources construction funds.

"We have preliminarily estimated that if 10% of the total land transfer income in the previous year can be implemented, 60-80 billion yuan of funds can be used for farmland and water conservancy construction." Chen Lei, Minister of Water Resources, said at a press conference held by the State New Office on January 30 that at present, relevant departments are elaborating and realizing relevant implementation plans, while relevant provinces (districts and municipalities) are also formulating relevant implementation plans and rules. He said that the western region owes more water resources, but the land income is relatively small. We are now studying a problem of overall planning to see if we can formulate a policy at the central level to make good use of this fund.

Increasing Financial Support for Water Conservancy Construction

Over 700 billion yuan in hydropower investment in the next five years

Documents proposed that the rational development of hydropower resources. On the premise of protecting ecology and farmers'interests, we should speed up the development and utilization of hydropower resources. Taking into account the functions of flood control, irrigation, water supply, power generation and shipping, we should make plans scientifically, actively develop hydropower, strengthen the management of hydropower resources, standardize development permits, and strengthen Hydropower Safety supervision. Vigorously develop rural hydropower, actively carry out the construction of electrified counties of new rural hydropower and ecological protection project of small hydropower substituting fuel, and do a good job in the construction of rural hydropower supporting power grid reconstruction project.