Bama receives $7.6m of autonomous region-level award

Bama Yao autonomous county in Hechi. [Photo/Hechi Daily]

Bama Yao autonomous county, Hechi was recently honored as a 2019 Guangxi Advanced County for Scientific Development and will receive a one-time reward of 50 million yuan ($7.6 million) from the autonomous regional finance.

In addition, it will be given priority to recommend projects within the central budget, be included in the autonomous region level to coordinate and promote major projects, be rewarded new construction land indicators, as well as be able to enjoy preferential power policies for industrial parks.

In recent years, Bama has explored a path for a national-level impoverished county to move towards high-quality sustainable development, realizing the integration and mutual promotion of its economy with poverty alleviation efforts.

The Shenzhen-Bama Big Health Cooperative Special Pilot Zone is under construction in Bama. [Photo/Hechi Daily]

The county has increased investment promotion. It has also developed a new type of collaboration model with Dapeng New District, Shenzhen, Guangdong province and jointly built the Shenzhen-Bama Big Health Cooperative Special Pilot Zone, attracting a number of well-known enterprises like Country Garden and China No 20 Metallurgical Group to settle in Bama for investing and starting businesses.

In 2019, 387 enterprises were newly established in the county, a year-on-year increase of 8.4 percent. At present, the Shenzhen-Bama Big Health Cooperative Special Pilot Zone has signed 34 cooperation projects, with a planned investment of 33.9 billion yuan. In 2019, 4 billion yuan in domestic investment and $1.03 million in foreign investment were actually put into place in the county.

Bama has also focused on creating a good ecological environment and improving people's livelihoods. The drinking water quality in urban areas in the county and the centralized treatment rate of urban domestic sewage both reach 100 percent, the ratio of days with good ambient air quality was 98 percent, while the forest coverage rate was above 78.84 percent.

Infrastructure conditions have been comprehensively improved. A total of 984 roads, spanning 1,612 kilometers, have been built to connect all impoverished villages in the county, while 96 village-level public service centers have been renovated. Ten relocation sites, with a total investment of 625 million yuan, have been constructed for 9,113 people from 1,900 impoverished households. Basic necessities, compulsory education, basic medical care, and housing safety have also been guaranteed.

New breakthroughs were made in poverty reduction efforts. From 2016 to 2019, a total of 61,969 impoverished people in the county were lifted out of poverty, with the incidence of poverty dropping to 1.24 percent.

In 2017, 2018, and 2019, Bama's GDP growth rate was 11.11 percent, 15.7 percent, and 11.1 percent respectively, while its fiscal revenue growth rate was 27.4 percent, 38.6 percent, and 34.5 percent respectively. Among them, the county's GDP growth rate in 2018 ranked first among all counties (districts) in Guangxi, while its GDP growth rate in 2019 ranked first among the 33 national-level impoverished counties in Guangxi.