BEIJING, Mar. 2 (Xinhua) -- China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and related departments are mulling guidelines on eliminating outdated production capacity in cement, ship-making, electrolytic aluminum and glass industries, reported the Xinhua-run www.cnstock.com on Wednesday.
According to the guidelines, the elimination of outdated capacity will be conducted according to the law, which has set up criteria in environmental protection, energy consumption, quality, safety and technology. The production capacities which fail to meet any one criterion will be phased out, while those meet all the criteria can not be phased out.
The central government decided to promote supply-side reform at the end of 2015. Eliminating outdated capacity is among the top priority. To achieve the goal, multiple means including phasing out outdated capacity, removing "zombie" enterprises and promoting industrial reorganization will be employed.
At present, the draft guidelines on cement and electrolytic aluminum industries have been completed. At least 500 million tonnes of low-grade cement production capacity will be phased out.
Kong Xiangzhong, vice president of China Cement Association, advised the central government to provide certain compensation for the industry and establish special fun so as to appropriately deal with the re-employment of redundant personnel and enterprise debts.
By far, several provinces have specified their goals. South China's Guangdong Province plans to keep the production capacity of steel and iron within 40 million tonnes by the end of 2018, that of cement clinker within 110 million tonnes, that of ship-making within 8 million dead weight tons (DWT).
North China's ShanxiProvinceis mulling general program in cutting outdated capacity in coal industry.
Northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region proposes that it will phase out 5 million tonnes of capacities in steel and iron, cement, electrolytic aluminum, coked coal, ferroalloy and calcium carbide in the coming two years. (Edited by Zhang Yuan, zhangyuan11@xinhua.org)