MEP considers tendering environmental clean-up to private firms
June 12, 2014 Category Environment, Pollution
The Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) is considering a new policy to boost its use of private contractors to let the market play a greater role in easing the country’s pollution. It calls for local governments to commission services from private firms, including sewage treatment, waterway clean-ups, national park maintenance, remediation of contaminated soil and pollution monitoring. The contracts would be arranged through public tender. Details of the new policy are to be released this month. The final payment would be based on the results achieved through the services, making government spending on cleaning up the environment more efficient. Government spending on environmental protection and energy conservation totaled CNY180 billion last year. The Ministry of Finance has called for a 16.7% increase in spending to CNY210 billion this year. Environmental experts say China needs to spend between 2% to 3% of its annual gross domestic product (GDP) on fighting pollution. Current levels of spending are far from adequate and even the money that is being spent is not well managed. The National Audit Office (NAO) said in June that CNY1.6 billion of government expenditure on energy conservation and environmental protection had been misused or embezzled in 2011 and 2012. Lin Shuanglin, Professor of Public Finance at Beijing University, said the public bidding process could invite corruption unless the process was properly supervised.
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