Xinhuanet reported that the Ministry of Industry & Information Technology issued this year backward capacity elimination tasks for 18 industries to the local governments recently in which targets for the 6 keynote sectors incl iron smelting, steelmaking, cement and electrolytic aluminum are found well above that prescribed by the state council previously.
Mr Li Yizhong head of MIIT said in a statement in the elimination conference that 30 million tonnes of iron smelting and 8.25 million tonnes of steelmaking capacities will be weeded out this year along with 21.27 million tonnes coke and 1.44 million tonnes ferroalloy when it goes to the iron & steel industry.
In the first 4 years of the 11th 5 year plan period, unit GDP consumed energy fell 14.38%, still below the target of 20% for the 5 year plan in this Q1 the unit GDP consumed energy contrarily grew 3.2% due to fast growth of such sectors as electricity, iron and steel, ferroalloy, construction steel and so on.
Mr Li stressed that the primary task at present is for each region to assign the elimination to cities, towns and enterprises as soon as possible as well as publish the backward capacity, equipment, deadline and list of involved enterprise in mainstay media and internet so as to ensure all are washed out before the third quarter. In the meanwhile, to new projects of high energy consuming heavily polluting and overcapacity industries should stop being examined and approved.
He said that elimination campaign is faced with many difficulties, and possibly to affect economic growth and fiscal income of local governments but we have no alternatives with changing the extensive growth pattern.
