THE government will strengthen its management of local government debt and control debt risks, the country’s Finance Minister said yesterday, according to Xinhua.

China will curb the rise in hidden debt and appropriately resolve outstanding hidden debt, Xinhua quoted Liu Kun, the minister, as saying. China also plans to improve the management of local construction projects by limiting projects that will have difficulty in repaying loans, the minister said.

The country will continue to push forward outstanding government debt swaps to ease repayment pressure on local government, the minister said, according to Xinhua.

The government has drawn up new guidelines on measuring and controlling “hidden” local government debt, according to media reports last week.

The new policy document calls on local governments to find out how much off-budget debt has been accumulated over the last three years and to draw up risk control plans.

China’s top economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), has pledged to keep debt levels under control even as China rolls out new economic stimulus measures to offset the impact of trade frictions with the United States.

The last round of inspections ended in 2014 and uncovered 15.7 trillion yuan (US$2.28 trillion) in total outstanding local government debt.

Total outstanding local government debt was 16.63 trillion yuan by the end of May, according to the latest figures from the Ministry of Finance.(SD-Agencies)