China has outlined plans for revitalizing and restructuring its light industries and often loss-making oil refining sector, in the government’s latest effort to help create jobs and boost economic growth.
The plans, issued by the State Council late on Monday and posted on the government’s Web site, are aimed at creating about 3 million jobs and helping manufacturers weather a sharp downturn in export demand amid the global financial crisis.
The measures are typical of the Chinese Communist Party’s penchant for grand, multiyear economic plans.
PHOTO: EPA
However, the government gave no specific dollar amount for the programs and it was unclear whether or not some costs are included in a 4 trillion yuan (US$586 billion) economic stimulus package announced late last year, which focused on construction projects.
The outline for the refining sector calls for raising crude oil processing capacity by about 18 percent from last year to 405 million tonnes a year by 2011.
By then, China plans to build three or four major refineries in the Yangtze River Delta, near Shanghai, and the Pearl River Delta, near Hong Kong in southern China, the notice by the State Council said.
Each plant would be able to process 20 million tonnes of crude oil per year, it said.
Meanwhile, existing refineries will be upgraded to become less polluting, with energy efficiency to be improved and discharges of waste water and sulfur dioxide to fall by more than 6 percent.
Chinese refineries processed more than 342 million tonnes of crude oil last year, while much of the country faced chronic shortages of diesel and gasoline, particularly before growth slowed late in the year.
Soaring crude oil prices left major refiners with massive losses because of price controls that prevented oil companies from passing on higher costs for oil imports to end users.
The government’s plans for the light industrial sector, also issued on its Web site, also did not include any financial details.
They call for upgrading technology and providing more support for small and medium-sized businesses that dominate the sector but suffer from a lack of access to back loans and other financing.
Light industries such as home appliance, apparel, shoe, furniture and plastics products makers employ some 35 million people and once dominated China’s export sector.
But thousands of such factories have closed amid the global downturn and many of those remaining need upgrading and improved environmental protection.
“At the same time that our light industry has grown very quickly, some long-term, acute contradictions and problems have emerged,” the plan said.
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