Authorities in Jiangsu Province have been actively implementing a national directive aimed at improving the provision of natural resource elements for project development. The provincial Department of Natural Resources, in collaboration with the Forestry Bureau, has issued a new notice introducing optimized measures to facilitate the accelerated implementation of major projects.

During the first half of this year, these efforts have secured land use approvals for 466 provincial-level major projects, 193 provincial private investment projects, and approximately 11,900 city and county-level major projects.

Streamlining Approval Procedures

A significant reform involves the land acquisition process for large-scale development. Previously, this required a separate plan involving 10 procedural steps and 18 sets of documentation. The new policy eliminates the need for a separate plan, condensing the process to a single public notification step and reducing required documents to just two items. This reform is estimated to cut documentation by nearly 90% and reduce the overall approval timeline by over two months.

Consolidating Technical Assessments

Another area of reform addresses the numerous technical assessments required for land and forestry use permits, which previously numbered up to 16 different studies. This was costly for enterprises and time-consuming for regulatory review. Jiangsu has deepened pilot reforms to integrate these "multiple assessments into one." By consolidating studies, preparing a single comprehensive report, organizing one technical review, and issuing one unified assessment opinion, the process aims to "efficiently accomplish a single task." Estimates suggest this integration can reduce approval materials by 70%, shorten the approval duration by about 60%, and lower compilation costs by approximately 40%.

Innovating with Early-Start Land Use Mechanisms

Jiangsu is pioneering a "commence construction upon project approval" mechanism. This expands the scope of eligible projects, now including provincial-level and above transportation, energy, water conservancy, and other individually sited projects, as well as other major construction projects endorsed by the provincial committee and government. Furthermore, it introduces advance services, allowing major projects to apply for early-start land use once they obtain approval for their feasibility study report (or record-filing), rather than waiting until the preliminary design is complete. This change can advance the project start date by 6 to 9 months.

Enhancing Whole-Process Coordination

Jiangsu is strengthening service guarantees throughout a project's lifecycle with a series of new measures. These include fully implementing joint approval for land and forestry use to continuously improve approval efficiency. For linear infrastructure projects, segmented approval is permitted to align with phased construction needs. Additionally, measures for securing temporary land and forestry use for major projects have been refined to precisely meet construction support requirements, comprehensively enhancing the precision and convenience of resource element provision.