BEIJING Aug 10 (Reuters) – There might be less than meets the eye to Beijing's demand that more than 2,000 companies close down obsolete, energy-guzzling plants by the end of next month.
On paper, the order given on Sunday raises the spectre of a sharp cut in industrial output growth, even as the robust economy shows modest signs of cooling.
In practice, several firms on the government's black list said they had either already shut the offending facilities or were planning new, bigger replacements.
Tianjin Tiangang United Steel Corp has two furnaces on the list of 2,087 factories targeted for closure by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) as part of a government drive to meet its energy-intensity goals.
But a manager who gave only his surname, Wu, said the firm had already dismantled the two furnaces in 2009 and built two new larger ones in their place.
"Any furnace with capacity above 400 (cubic metres) is in line with state policy," Wu told Reuters.
Under its five-year plan that runs out at the end of 2010, China wants to reduce the amount of fuel that goes into each unit of economic output by 20 percent. It is already the world's second-largest consumer of oil behind the United States.
Energy efficiency improved nearly 16 percent in 2006-2009, but then stalled. In the first half of 2010, China used 0.09 percent more energy per unit of gross domestic product, prompting Premier Wen Jiabao to demand an all-out effort to meet the goal. [ID:nTOE67206L]
