国内英语新闻:Senior Chinese legislator urges more favorable taxation policies to encourage cleaner product

BEIJING, Aug. 26 (Xinhua) -- Chinese senior legislator Chen Zhili on Thursday called for preferential policies in taxation for enterprises using cleaner production methods to promote their competitiveness.

Chen, vice chairwoman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, made the remarks during her report on an inspection on the enforcement of the Cleaner Production Promotion Law.

Favorable policies and funding provided in the law had been poorly implemented, and that had impaired the enterprises' initiative in achieving cleaner production, Chen said.

Chen said statistics gathered during the inspection did not provide reasons to be optimistic. During the period from 2003 to 2009, only 0.15 percent of the enterprises nationwide had integrated the cleaner production review into their operations.

Chen also noted the serious situation of excessive packaging used in protecting products.

Statistics revealed that China had been consuming 40 million tonnes of wrapping materials annually, and the bulk of this was used for extravagant packaging, Chen said.

Future policies should make detailed provisions on requirements of enterprises eligible for such tax preferences, and those enterprises, which had made outstanding efforts in cleaner production, should be rewarded, Chen said.

Chen also urged streamlining the task assignments among different governmental departments in law enforcement and promote the government's supervisory responsibilities.