国内英语新闻:Top legislature hears law enforcement, economic reports

BEIJING, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, held a plenary meeting on Friday to hear reports on law enforcement and economic work.

Li Zhanshu, chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, attended the meeting of its bimonthly session which runs from Thursday to Monday, and delivered a report on the enforcement of the water pollution prevention and control law.

The meeting was presided over by Chen Zhu, vice chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, and attended by 165 members of the committee.

The NPC Standing Committee has identified the enforcement inspection of the law as a priority of its supervision work, said Li when delivering the report.

Noting that the enforcement of the law has achieved positive results on the whole, Li said more work still needs to be done.

Legal responsibilities should be specified and delegated based on stipulations of the law, Li said, adding that science and technology should also be used to support the efforts.

Governments, enterprises and the public should pool efforts to tackle water pollution, he said.

He Lifeng, head of the National Development and Reform Commission, said China's economy has maintained steady growth with good momentum in the first half of 2019 when delivering a report on the enforcement of the national economic and social development plan.

He also laid out several major tasks of national economic and social development in the second half of the year.

When giving a report on the implementation of this year's budget to the lawmakers, Minister of Finance Liu Kun said that the country's general public budget revenue from January to July was nearly 12.6 trillion yuan (1.79 trillion U.S. dollars), while the general public budget expenditure in the same period was nearly 13.8 trillion yuan, up 3.1 percent and 9.9 percent, respectively.

Zhang Chunxian, vice chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, gave a report on the enforcement of the law on employment promotion, saying that major issues in employment should be researched, and relevant laws and regulations should be improved during future revisions.