China Plans Environmental Tax     

China's environmental protection departments started to formulate an environmental tax regulation, according to Pan Yue, vice Minister of the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MOEP). He also disclosed that policy researchers are preparing to formulate other three regulations - environmental charge, ecological subsidy and trade of pollutants discharging right.
   In the past year, the Chinese government took into effective four clean development economic policies, named green credit, green insurance, green stock and green foreign trade, all of which together can nearly tell no way for heavy pollution projects to gain fund.
    The 'green stock' policy took into effective in February 2008. This policy required the IPO or re-issuance of firms engaged in the thirteen heavy pollution sectors including cement, electrolysis aluminum, papermaking, building materials must in advance pass the environmental protection check.  "The pollution controlling departments of MOEP has checked 38 companies' IPO or re-issuance applications, denied 20 of them. The denied projects totally involved in more than RMB10 billion investment," commented Pan Yue. The firms who discharge pollutants not meeting standards, or have not placed and stored its industrial solid wastes and dangerous wastes safely or have not passed the environmental impact assessment will be refused.