(Yicai Global) March 13 -- China's cabinet has decided to delegate part of land approval rights to lower-level administrations on a trial basis. The move will shorten the approvals process, enabling authorities to better allocate resources and promote economic development, according to experts.

The State Council said in a policy document yesterday that the pilot program will launch in eight provinces and cities, including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Guangdong.

The cabinet will entrust some provinces with the right to approve the conversion of permanent basic farmland into areas for building work. It will also entrust some with the expropriation rights for permanent basic farmland, other cultivated land with an area of more than 35 hectares and other land with an area of more than 70 hectares, the document said.

China has a strict protection system for land under cultivation, which divides rural land into permanent basic farmland, general cultivated land, and construction land. Permanent basic farmland can be converted into construction land only after approval from the State Council.

The new policy will streamline the review and approval process, promote the conversion of some agricultural land and help increase the amount of construction land, Yan Yuejin, head of research at Shanghai E-House Real Estate Research Institute, told Yicai Global. The policy will help provincial governments to take into account local conditions and manage the construction land market, Yan added.

Delegating land review and approval rights will help boost local governments' ability to coordinate the use of land resources, and encourage them to optimize the allocation of land resources and develop the economy, Liu Junjie, deputy researcher of the Research Center for Rural Economy of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, told Yicai Global.

The pilot project encompasses the cities of Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing and the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, and Guangdong.

These areas are in China's most economically developed regions, and in some places construction land quotas could be running out, Liu said. Pilot programs in these areas can ease the tension of construction land, and pave the way for national land reform.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Peter Thomas