China Draws From Next Year’s Budget for Local Government Handouts

China’s finance ministry has dipped into next year’s budget to hand over 400 billion yuan ($59.7 billion) to local governments to cover the cost of tax breaks and fee cuts designed to give businesses a break amid the country’s latest wave of Covid-19 outbreaks.

The early release of the funds originally earmarked for next year shows the lengths that the central government is willing to go to bolster local economies as major provincial-level regions experienced economic slowdowns after rolling out stringent Covid-19 measures, and as some analysts have predicted that China will miss it GDP growth target for this year.