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China to invest $5 billion to renovate rural houses: Xinhua

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SHANGHAI | Sat Jul 14, 2012 6:33am EDT

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China will provide 31.87 billion yuan ($5 billion) in subsidies for the renovation of rural households this year, the state-run Xinhua News Agency said on Saturday.

The pilot scheme will cover 4 million poor rural homes, the agency cited a joint statement by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the Ministry of Finance and the National Development & Reform Commission.

Each dilapidated house will be given 7,500 yuan on average, while 130,000 poverty-stricken rural households located in the border areas will be granted another 2,500 yuan in subsidies each.

(Reporting by Ruby Lian and Carrie Ho)
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Comments (3)
walfourth wrote:
Even for China, that is a pretty meagre sum. Also, the number of people that this small amount of assistance would help is quite trivial compared to the actual need.

Jul 14, 2012 8:46am EDT  --  Report as abuse
walfourth wrote:
Even for China, that is a pretty meagre sum. Also, the number of people that this small amount of assistance would help is quite trivial compared to the actual need.

Jul 14, 2012 8:46am EDT  --  Report as abuse
UnPartisan wrote:
That is about $1200. I don’t know the prices of housing or upgrades, but that doesn’t seem like much money or news to me. The US offers hundreds of tax rebates and incentives for housing right now, valued at much more than $1200.

Jul 14, 2012 11:50am EDT  --  Report as abuse
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