Recently, the Ministry of Finance issued the Measures for the Administration of Local Government Bond Information Disclosure Platform (hereinafter referred to as the Measures) to standardize the management of local government bond information disclosure platform and make provisions for the disclosure of information related to local government debt.

Local Government Bond Information Disclosure Platform refers to the nationwide unified official platform for local government debt information disclosure organized and established by the Ministry of Finance in accordance with the relevant documents of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council. The registered website is called "China Local Government Bond Information Disclosure Platform", and the domain name of the registered website is www.celma.org.cn.

According to the Measures, the finance departments (bureaus) of all provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities directly under the Central Government, cities separately listed in the state plan and the finance bureau of Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps shall organize financial departments at all levels in their regions to disclose local government debt information through public platforms in accordance with relevant regulations on local government debt information disclosure.

Local government debt related information includes local government debt data and relevant text information. Local financial departments shall, in accordance with the provisions of the disclosure measures and other systems, promptly disclose the local government debt ceiling, balance, local government bond issuance, projects, debt servicing, major events, duration management, economic and social development indicators, financial situation and other relevant information in the corresponding columns of the disclosure platform.

According to the regulation, local financial departments at all levels and related units shall be responsible for the authenticity, accuracy, completeness, standardization and timeliness of the disclosure of local government debt information in accordance with the principle of who produces, discloses and is responsible for the disclosure. Special persons shall be designated to be responsible for the information disclosure of the open platform, and timely collect and import the information related to local government debt into the corresponding column of the open platform, which shall be released on the open platform after verification and confirmation.

At the same time, the issuing places of local government bonds shall send the issuing results to the public platform of the Ministry of Finance for data verification no later than 3 working days after the issuance of local government bonds. Once the local government debt information is released on the open platform, it is not allowed to be changed at will. If there is indeed any error and need to be corrected, it shall be filed with the Government Debt Research and Evaluation Center of the Ministry of Finance, and re-published on the open platform in accordance with the procedures.

The measures specify that the government debt research and evaluation center of the Ministry of Finance will establish an evaluation and notification system, organize the evaluation of the disclosure of local government debt information, regularly report the evaluation results, and take the evaluation results as an important reference for the performance evaluation of local government debt.

Source: Ministry of Finance, PRC