| Ten Government Departments Jointly Control Surplus Capacity |
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| 2009-10-21 17:42 website of Ministry of Environmental Protection |
Recently, ten government departments including the State Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Industry and Informatization and Ministry of Environmental Protection jointly held a press conference to publicize measures undertaken to control surplus capacity and overlapping investment in some industries and to guide healthy and sound development of industrial sectors.
Xiong Bilin, Inspector of Industry Coordination Division of the State Development and Reform Commission, said that the national government will take such control measures as raising the market access threshold, tightening environmental regulatory efforts, intensifying control over project approval process and implementing accountability and responsibility system. Relevant industrial authorities are required to faithfully perform their duties, formulate and refine relevant industry policies in time, revise and release Industrial Restructuring Directory as soon as practical, further raise the market access threshold for steel, cement, plate glass and conventional coal chemical industries in terms of energy consumption, environmental protection and comprehensive resource utilization.
According to the source, the central government will promote environmental impact assessment practice for regional industrial planning. EIA documents for steel, cement, plate glass, conventional coal chemical and polysilicon and other energy-consuming and heavily-polluting projects will be handled, examined and approved only after passing the industrial planning EIA for respective region. No expansion of such projects may be approved by any local government in principle, nor may any local government delegate the approval authority or approve any expansion projects in these industries in violation of the regulations. Any project that fails to pass EIA approval may not be implemented. The name list of nonconforming production enterprises will be publicized on a regular basis. Any enterprise using toxic or hazardous materials in the process of production or discharging toxic or hazardous substance during production is required to complete clean production audit; any production enterprise that fails to meet the emission standard or exceeds the total emission quota shall make corrections within the specified period, and those that fail to do so within the deadline will be shut down according to applicable laws. For areas where main pollutant emissions exceed the total quantity indices, EIA permission will be suspended for any project that involves additional emission of main pollutants.
Government departments at all levels are required to faithfully perform their duties, maintain rigorous control on land requisition, environmental protection, credit extension, industry policy and project approval according to applicable laws, regulations and rules, intensify policy research, information sharing and coordination, collaborate with each other to effectively curb surplus capacity and overlapping investment in some industries and guide sound development of these industries and transformation of development model.
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