On August 8, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) published a list of enterprises in 18 industries which are considered to have out-of-date production capacities and which are therefore to be eliminated. The enterprises in question are to be shut down by the end of September this year.
A total of 2,087 enterprises are included in the list. For the major industries, the numbers are as follows: 762 enterprises in the cement industry, 279 in the papermaking industry, 201 in the printing and dyeing industry, 192 in the coking industry, 175 in the iron smelting industry, 143 in the ferroalloy industry, and 84 in the leather industry. The provinces with largest numbers of enterprises included in the list are: Henan Province with 230, Shanxi Province with 226, Zhejiang Province with 180, Hebei Province with 165, Yunnan Province with 165, and Guizhou Province with 128 enterprises.
According to the list, 35.246 million mt of production capacity in the iron smelting industry is affected, 8.764 million mt of output capacity in the steelmaking industry is affected, as well as 25.865 million mt of capacity in the coking industry and 1.719 million mt of ferroalloy capacity. On May 27 this year, the MIIT had assigned the following capacity elimination targets for each industry: 30 million mt for the iron smelting industry, 8.25 million mt for the steelmaking industry, 21.27 million mt for the coking industry and 1.44 million mt for the ferroalloy industry.
Li Yizhong, the Chinese minister of Industry and Information Technology, stated that, according to the related files from China's State Council, the licenses of enterprises that are not eliminated in due time will be terminated, financial institutions will not be allowed to provide loan support to such enterprises, the relevant authorities should not give approval to new projects of these enterprises, the national land resources department should not authorize allocation of land to these enterprises, and previously awarded approval or safety certificates should be terminated.