China's Ministry of Finance (MOF) said Thursday that a program involving 200 billion yuan (29.41 billion U.S.dollars) in local government bond issues is scheduled to end next month.

The MOF said in a statement that it planned to issue local government bonds valued at 24 billion yuan in the latter half of June, which meant that 165.9 billion yuan worth of local bonds would have been issued by the end of June, or about 83 percent of the total.

According to the MOF, those bonds would be issued in 37 batches and on behalf of 19 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions and three cities (Qingdao, Dalian and Xiamen).

The ministry said sales of the remaining 34.1 billion yuan worth of local bonds, on behalf of 11 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, and the cities of Shenzhen and Ningbo, would be completed in July.

The MOF issued this year's first batch of local government bonds of 3 billion yuan on behalf of Xinjiang Autonomous Region at the end of March.

The bond issues are intended to help finance local governments under the central government's 4-trillion-yuan economic stimulus package.

(Xinhua News Agency June 19, 2009)