BEIJING -- China's central government has increased recovery fund for natural disasters this year, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said Tuesday.

The increase was huge, and the current recovery fund is almost twice as much as before, said Pang Chenmin, head of the ministry's disaster relief bureau in a press conference.

In 2017, the central government has spent nearly 1.2 billion yuan ($177 million) on recovery work after natural disasters.

In an executive meeting in May, China's State Council decided to raise the subsidy for emergency assistance efforts in natural disasters, the pension for family members of those killed in major disasters, the life assistance fund in the transitional period, and central government subsidy for recovering and rebuilding damaged residential buildings.

Pang stressed that the recovery fund was sent to local governments instead of those directly affected.

"We need to work with the supervisory departments at the provincial-level, and we welcome auditing and other supervisory organizations to jointly monitor the expenditure of the money," Pang said.

The ministry will correct the problems found and punish those responsible, he added.

Pang said there were 142,000 damaged residential buildings needing to be rebuilt in 2016, and 93.2 percent of the rebuilding work has been finished so far.

The ministry will work with other departments and send supervising teams to make sure the rebuilding work can be completed in 2017.