The government welcomes private enterprises to invest in the
environmental protection industry, Zhao Yingmin, vice-chief of the
State Environmental Protection Administration's Science and
Technology Standards Department has said.
Zhao said the central government would adjust the relevant policy
to support and cultivate more environmental protection enterprises
and groups, with private enterprises included in accordance with
market regulation, according to China Industry and Commerce
Times.
According to Zhao, private enterprises have become one of the most
active investors in the environmental protection industry. In 2000,
there were 2,980 private enterprises involved employing some
17,4000 people, and earning 972 million yuan (US$117.4 million) in
annual profits. Among them, 187 had earned ISO9000 certification. A
total of 2,736 environmental protection technology projects had
been developed by them independently.
During the tenth Five-Year Plan Period (2001-05), the total
investments required for environmental protection is 700 billion
yuan (US$84.5 billion), accounting for about 1.3 percent of GDP in
the period, and for 3.6 percent of the social fixed assets
investment, one percentage point higher than that in the ninth
Five-Year Plan period, Zhao said.
At
present, the government investment accounts for 56 percent of the
total requirement for the environmental protection industry. The
investments of enterprises, occupying the remaining percentage,
involve money spent by enterprises themselves in the treatment of
industrial pollution in accordance with the principle of "who
causes pollution should dispose of it."
According to Zhao, the participation of private enterprises in the
environmental protection industry is to be realized through social
investments, which means the mechanism of market should be utilized
to motivate and absorb social funds through reforming the
fee-charging system of sewage discharge and the investment and
financing systems of environmental protection.
He
said more and more private enterprises would be involved in this
field as the demand for environmental protection investment would
expand to a large degree in the coming few years. Facing such
opportunities, private enterprises can actively carry out
management activities in the environmental protection industry
using their own advantages.
(china.org.cn by Zhang Tingting, August 8, 2002)