- Investment

On April 2, the State Council decided to speed up railway construction in the central and western regions, with 6,600 km of new railway lines planned for 2014 nationwide, and establish a railway development fund worth 200-300 billion yuan ($32-48 billion) a year.

On April 2, the State Council decided to facilitate the renovation of rundown communities in urban regions sell bonds to institutional investors to support the renovation and infrastructure construction in urban areas.

On April 23, the State Council decided to encourage social capital to participate in infrastructure construction by opening 80 projects to public bidding, such as the construction of railway, ports and information infrastructure.

- Taxation

On April 8, the Ministry of Finance announced that small and low-profit enterprises with a taxable income not exceeding 100,000 yuan ($16,110) should pay corporate income tax at the rate of 20 percent on only half of their taxable income. The preferential policy is effective from January 1, 2014 to December 31, 2016.

- Finance

On April 25, the central bank trimmed the reserve requirement ratio for county-level rural commercial lenders by 2 percentage points and that for rural credit cooperatives by 0.5 percentage points.

On June 16, the central bank lowered the reserve requirement ratio for commercial banks that issue a certain proportion of loans to small and micro-businesses and agricultural projects by 0.5 percentage points.

On July 1, the China Banking Regulatory Commission adopted a new method of calculating the loan-to-deposit ratio to allow lenders to extend more loans.

(Compiled by Beijing Review)