China has decided to blacklist convicted bribers from among contractors of construction projects in five provincial areas on a trial basis, an official document says.

According to a circular issued by the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Ministry of Construction, the Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of Water Resources, the move aims to prevent and crack down on corruption in engineering and construction projects, which involve hundreds of billion US dollars a year.

To be blacklisted are convicted bribers involved in application for approval of a construction project, surveying, designing, bidding, capital allocation, or procurement and distribution of materials and equipment.

A record of the bribers' cases will be set up by procuratorate departments in the five areas, and made available to relevant government departments and legal persons of construction projects.

The five areas are the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, which border Shanghai Municipality, east China; Chongqing Municipality and Sichuan Province, southwest China; and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, south China.

The blacklisted contractors will be restricted or banned from access to the local construction market temporarily or permanently, or be disqualified partly or fully, the circular says.

Construction, communications and water resources departments in the five areas are ordered to include the bribers' information system as part of their ongoing efforts to build a construction market credit rating system for corporate and individual contractors.

Government-funded construction projects have been a hotbed for corruption in China in recent years. In central China's Henan Province, three officials of the provincial communications department were found guilty of taking bribes from construction firms in State-funded highway or other construction projects.

(Xinhua News Agency May 9, 2004)