In the January-September period of the current year, fixed asset investment (FAI) in railways in China totaled RMB 554.6 billion ($78.3 billion), down 3.1 percent year on year, with the decreasing pace was 0.6 percentage points faster compared to that recorded in the January-August period this year, as announced by China Railway Corporation (CRC), China’s state-owned national railway operator.
At the beginning of this year, CRC announced that in 2019 it planned to complete FAI in China’s railways worth RMB 800 billion ($112.9 billion), indicating FAI in railways in the first three quarters of the year only completed 69.33 percent of the annual target. On October 12, Lu Dongfu, the president of CRC stressed that the company will try its best to realize the annual target for FAI in railways.
Though the growth of FAI in railways in the January-September period slowed down, it still was the second highest level, e.g. they were RMB 491.894 billion, RMB 542.342 billion, RMB 545.545 billion and RMB 572.289 billion for the same period over the past four years-the year of 2015 to 2018.