China needs $349b to rebuild

tauringhuang.

BEIJING - CHINA has raised about a quarter of the nearly US$250 trillion it needs to rebuild after May's earthquake that left nearly 90,000 people dead or missing and destroyed much of Sichuan's infrastructure, a state-controlled newspaper said on Tuesday.

The China Daily, citing provincial Vice Governor Huang Xiaoxiang, said the southwestern province needed an estimated 1.67 trillion yuan (S$349.2 billion) to rebuild.

So far, just a quarter of that had been raised, leaving a shortfall of about US$180 billion. The report did not say where the shortfall was.

'Sichuan is still in need of a large amount of funds despite the efforts of the central government, local governments and other social sectors,' the official Xinhua News Agency on Monday quoted Huang as saying.

The May 12 earthquake destroyed roads, knocked down buildings, left thousands of schools in piles of rubble and destroyed the homes of millions of people.

Shortly after the quake hit, the government set up a 70 billion yuan (S$14.6 billion) relief fund for reconstruction, and promised more over the next two years, although it did not release a figure.

State agencies were told to cut planned spending by 5 percent this year to finance the fund.

The relief fund is financed by the central government, provincial governments and domestic and overseas donations.

The government has so far spent 67.47 billion yuan - slightly more than half on reconstruction and the rest on rescue work - most of it from the central government's budget, according to figures posted on the central government's Web Site.

It did not say how much of this was spent on Sichuan, as Qinghai and Gansu provinces also suffered damage.

Only 27 billion yuan of 59 billion yuan in domestic and foreign donations have so far reached quake-hit areas, the government Web site said, citing the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

China Daily said plans called for 4.5 million homes, 31,700 miles (51,000 kilometres) of highways and 3,400 miles (5,500 kilometres) of railways to be rebuilt.

In addition, nearly 12,000 schools had to be built or rebuilt.

Thousands of children died when their shoddily built schools collapsed in the earthquake.

Huang made the comments on Monday at an international trade and investment fair in the coastal city of Xiamen, where he was presenting investment opportunities in Sichuan.

He met with delegates from Hong Kong, Taiwan and the US, the Sichuan government said on its Web site.

'Right now the quake-hit area is back on track, and the economy is stable and developing relatively quickly,' he was quoted as saying.

Sichuan officials have said they want to rebuild communities within three years.

A woman from the propaganda department of the Sichuan provincial Communist Party said she did not know about the reported shortfall in funds to rebuild the quake zone. She referred the query to the party's news office, where the phone was not answered.

During a visit to the quake zone last week to mark 110 days since the disaster, Premier Wen Jiabao said rebuilding homes and infrastructure shattered by the temblor was the country's most urgent disaster relief task, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

The earthquake caused vast damage to the province's infrastructure, but the government announced last week that workers had repaired a 56-mile (90-kilometre) road linking the epicenter of the powerful magnitude 7.9 quake in Wenchuan county to Dujiangyan near the provincial capital of Chengdu.

About 80 per cent of the road was destroyed. -- AP