Briefing the ongoing session of the Beijing Municipal People's Congress, the local legislature, Shen Baochang, director of the city development planning commission, said that the municipal government also planned to create 200,000 new jobs to keep the registered urban unemployment rate below 2.5 percent.

In 2003, Beijing was also expecting an around 15 percent growth in local fiscal revenues, an over 13 percent expansion in social fixed assets investment, an over 10 percent rise in social consumer commodities' retail rates and a 10 percent foreign export increase, Shen added.

If all those economic targets were attained, the per capita disposable income for urban residents and per capita net income for rural residents in the Beijing area would achieve an actual growth of over 6 percent, said the director.

Beside, the municipal government will spend 4.5 billion yuan (US$542 million) on urban infrastructure construction in 2003, with priority given to developing urban rail transport and building more roads, a senior local official said here on Tuesday.

Explaining the Beijing Municipal Government's draft fiscal budget to the ongoing session of the municipal legislature, Wu Shixiong, director of the city's finance department, said that the budget aims to improve the quality of life for local residents.

The city government plans to allocate 4.09 billion yuan (US$493 million) for the improvement of the local social protection network in 2003, said Wu.

The money will be used to ensure the timely and full payment of pensions for enterprise retirees, support the reform of the basic medicare insurance system, help more unemployed persons to locate employment and promote health care in rural areas, he said.

It will also cost the city 2.1 billion yuan (US$253 million) to improve the urban environment through air pollution control and other efforts, said the director.

The fiscal budget for 2003 also contains several special funds, including 1 billion yuan (US$120 million) for preliminary work for the 2008 Olympics, 1.45 billion yuan (US$175 million)for local industrial and economic restructuring, and another 1.8 billion yuan (US$217 million) for the development of a science and technology park in the Zhongguancun area, a booming hi-tech center in northwest Beijing.

(Edited by china.org.cn January 15, 2003)