In the first week of the New Year, Qingdao took the lead in issuing 21.26 billion yuan of local government bonds, marking the beginning of the local bond issuance in 2023, a little earlier than 2022. According to the statistics of issuance plans recently released in many places, the total amount of planned issuance of local bonds in the first quarter has exceeded 1 trillion yuan. Industry insiders predict that local bonds will continue to move forward in 2023, drive the expansion of effective investment, and consolidate the basis for economic stability. In accordance with the requirements of the Central Economic Work Conference, fiscal policies will be strengthened in 2023. Based on comprehensive analysis, fiscal expenditure in 2023 will maintain a certain intensity of expenditure, accelerate the pace of expenditure, and further optimize the structure of fiscal expenditure. In the process of effectively supporting high-quality development, we will also pay more attention to ensuring fiscal sustainability and preventing local government debt risks. Early issuance may also increase the scale. On January 6, Qingdao publicly issued 4.1 billion yuan of general bonds and 17.16 billion yuan of special bonds, both of which are new bonds. The funds raised from special bonds are intended to be used for the construction of 153 projects. 2022 will be January 13, and 2023 will be January 6. The reporter of China Securities Journal noted that the early launch of local bonds in 2023 is still distinctive, and the starting date of the first batch of local bonds will be one week earlier than that in 2022. Entering the new week, the issuance of local bonds will become busy: Xiamen will issue 1.4 billion yuan of local bonds on January 9; Henan Province will issue 81.145 billion yuan of special bonds on January 10; In addition, Dalian and Jiangsu will issue 1.2 billion yuan and 15.2 billion yuan of general bonds on January 12 and 13, respectively. According to the statistics of Zhongtai Securities, as of January 6, a total of 16 provinces and cities specifically designated in the plan had disclosed plans for the issuance of local bonds in the first quarter of 2023, with a total planned issuance of 1113.4 billion yuan. Including 967.3 billion yuan of new bonds and 146.1 billion yuan of refinanced bonds; General bonds were 241.2 billion yuan, and special bonds were 872.2 billion yuan. As an important means to support the expansion of effective investment and the stabilization of the macro-economy, many experts predict that the amount of special debt is expected to increase in 2023. Wen Bin, chief economist of Minsheng Bank, believes that in 2023, considering the need to promote the overall improvement of the economy, infrastructure investment will continue to grow, and it is expected that the scale of new special debt will increase on the basis of 3.65 trillion yuan for two consecutive years. Hu Xiaoli, an analyst of Industrial Research, said that based on the disclosed plan for the issuance of government bonds and local bonds, the size of government bonds may reach 17.59 trillion yuan in 2023, including 9.23 trillion yuan of government bonds and 8.36 trillion yuan of local bonds. In addition, in order to maintain the necessary intensity of fiscal expenditure, the budget deficit rate is also expected to increase. Lou Jiwei, the former Minister of the Ministry of Finance, believes that the national general budget deficit in 2023 needs to be increased, mainly for increasing current expenditure, and the deficit ratio needs to be increased, perhaps more than 3%. It is particularly important to improve the use efficiency of bond funds while the issuing scale of special bonds is expected to expand. Liu Kun, Minister of Finance, said recently that he would guide local governments to do a good job in the reserve and preliminary work of special bond projects and further improve the project reserve