SHENZHEN Concert Hall and Shenzhen Grand Theater are left idle for at least six months a year, a report submitted to lawmakers showed.
In three years, Shenzhen Grand Theater was not used for two-thirds of the days and Shenzhen Concert Hall has been empty 180 days a year since it opened in October 2007, Shenzhen Evening News reported yesterday, quoting a meeting of lawmakers reviewing the report.
The city spent 23.58 million yuan (US$3.58 million) funding the theater and 40.4 million yuan funding the concert hall over the three years. Yet the two cultural venues had seen economic losses totaling 42.22 million yuan, not including the depreciation of facilities, the report said.
The rate of use of the two venues smaller halls was even lower, remaining idle for 80 percent of the year, the report said.
Compared with the Shanghai Grand Theater and Hong Kong Cultural Center, which organize performances on 220 days of the year on average, Shenzhen concert halls have been underused, the report said.
Lawmakers of the Committee of Planning and Budget of the Shenzhen Municipal People s Congress, in the preliminary review, hoped the cultural institutions would draw lessons from the experience of Hong Kong and Singapore to improve their managerial level and increase returns.
The committee also reviewed the fund that was used to purchase new-energy buses. Shenzhen Bus Group purchased 147 hybrid buses by July this year and 79 buses were put into operation. The remaining 36 were not put into service owing to a shortage of charging stations. <2001>(Han Ximin)
