14.87 billion yuan to improve livelihoods in Inner Mongolia

By Liu Yufen (chinadaily.com.cn)

Updated: 2014-03-17

North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region will invest in a special fund valued at 14.87 billion yuan (US$2.4 billion) in 2014, to guarantee and improve the livelihood in the region. According to the Inner Mongolia Department of Finance, this special fund will be mainly spent in social sectors including education, social security and health care.

With regard to education, the fund will help to balance development in compulsory education, enhancing its modern vocational education. A performance-oriented fund granting system will be established in the education sector.

In 2014, a positive policy on employment will be kept active in the region. Moreover, with the fund, Inner Mongolia is going to optimize the investment system of a "professionals-driven development" project. The employment and start-ups of university and college graduates and labor transfer from rural areas will be given priority this year.

Also, a lot of importance will be attached to pushing forward the conditional transfer of new rural social endowment insurance for rural residents with a basic endowment insurance for urban workers by the autonomous region this year. It seeks to establish a temporary assistance system across the region. It also plans to set up a sustainable fundraising system based on the responsibilities of governments, units and individuals and to increase the proportion of critical illness expenditure in new rural social endowment insurances for rural residents and basic endowment insurance for urban workers.

As a measure to enhance people's livelihoods, the special fund will also be used to implement a development-oriented poverty alleviation strategy with the goal of reducing the poverty population by 400,000 people and to increase their income by over 15 percent. More investment will be allocated to build public housing, as well as to standardize the management in this segment.