Making MIIT’s list no ‘full-output’ guarantee for mills
On its website Tuesday the ministry published a list of over 400 domestic manufacturing enterprises nationwide including twelve steelmakers whose facilities met its anti-pollution requirements. The batch, the ministry’s third for this year, is available for public review until October 23, with the steel enterprises included taking to 43 the number the ministry has approved as ‘green’ so far.
“Being in the list is more like an official certification of those enterprises,” an MIIT official explained. “It’s never a guarantee for them to avoid local capacity curbs,” he told Mysteel, adding that those enterprises being passed by MIIT received no prize or policy-support as a result. It was up to local governments whether they take those enterprises on MIIT’s list into consideration when formulating the specific production curtailment plans, he warned.
An official from the Industry and Information Technology Department of Hebei province, where 10 of the 43 eco-friendly steel mills are located, denied that any priority or preferential policies were afforded the steelmakers in MIIT’s list.
However, market sources disagreed, maintaining that these central-government accredited steelmakers did benefit. “Being recognized by the MIIT will be a great advantage for the mills because the upgrading of their environmental protection facilities is a crucial requirement if they want to be exempted from curtailments,” a Hebei-based industry source said.
The issue is important because many Chinese provinces or regions have formulated various environment-related standards for different industrial sectors in their work plans of capacity restrictions in the coming winter season beginning next month. This is in line with Beijing’s directive that this winter there will be no blanket curbs – the so-called “one-for-all” measures – imposed by the central government and that instead, local governments will allow those enterprises with better environmental protection facilities to be exempted from production curbs, as Mysteel reported.
For example, a month ago Tangshan, a major steel production hub in North China’s Hebei province, announced that this winter, the degree to which a steel mill’s production would be cut would depend on which of four categories from A to D it fell into. This was determined by the environmental of friendliness of their facilities, with those fully meeting Hebei’s criteria being exempt from curbs while though rated most poor could have their production clipped by 70%, as reported.
MIIT is warning steel firms that being included on its approved list is no guarantee local governments will similarly bless them and allow them to produce as much as they want to this winter.
Written by Venus Wang, wangyi@mysteel.com
Edited by Russ McCulloch, russ.mcculloch@mysteel.com
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