(Yicai Global) Jan. 18 -- China’s investment in infrastructures is expected to continue its rapid growth momentum this year, according to economists.

The annual growth of China’s infrastructure investment will likely stand at around 8 percent in 2023, said Luo Zhiheng, chief economist at Yuekai Securities. This year, the external demand’s environment will change, and the real estate sector and consumption will take their time to recover, bringing uncertainties, Luo added, noting that infrastructures are important means to stabilize the economy.

China’s infrastructure investment jumped 9.4 percent last year from 2021, up from 0.4 percent the year prior, data released by the National Bureau of Statistics showed yesterday. It was the first time in four years that the figure saw positive growth, becoming one of the highlights of China’s economic data and helping report better-than-expected fourth-quarter results.

The investment in water management surged 13.6 percent in 2022 from the previous year, with that in public facilities management and information transmission up 10.1 percent and 9.3 percent, respectively, Kang Yi, head of the NBS, told Yicai Global yesterday. Fixed-asset investment will hopefully continue to rise this year, Kang added.

China’s overall growth in infrastructure investment will be around 6 percent this year, said Wang Qing, chief macroeconomic analyst at Golden Credit Rating. In 2022, investment in traditional infrastructures surged, buoyed by a big increase in water management investment, Wang noted.  

From what emerged from the Two Session meetings recently held by local governments, infrastructure investment will mainly focus on municipal administration, industrial parks, rails transits, energies, agriculture, forestry, water management, and ecological and environmental protection, Luo said.

New infrastructures, represented by digitization, intelligence, low-carbon, and other fields, will become the investment focus of various Chinese provincial-level regions this year, Luo noted. 

“Spurred by the constantly strengthening supporting policies and recovery in market demands, we predict that the annual growth in new infrastructure investment will reach 15 percent to 20 percent in 2023, 10 percentage points to 15 percentage points higher than the overall infrastructure investment, strongly facilitating economic growth,” Wang said. 

Editors: Zhang Yushuo, Futura Costaglione