While facing the growing pressure on achieving the objectives of energy saving, China is likely to publish plan on raising tax resources in shot time.

   Some experts said that it is far from enough to only raise the resource tax, urging the country to carry out reform on taxation system.

   According to the General Work Plan for Energy Conservation and Pollutant Discharge Reduction published by the State Council, the cabinet, China will step up formulation of plan on reform of resource tax, improve forms of tax levying, and raise tax burden.

   Sources said that the country will change the past specific tax to ad valorem tax in a bid to increase the costs on use of resources.

   Han Wenke, director of the Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said that there is no specific timetable for raising resource tax, but adjustment of the tax is a must, which shall be conducted in a gradual way.

   An expert with the Ministry of Finance said that it is known to all that the low prices China's resources have led to serious waste and excessive exploitation of resources. Raising resource tax is in keeping with the target of building China into energy-saving and resource-conservancy society.

   China's present price formation mechanism of energy and resources cannot fully reflect the degrees of scarcity of resources, the relations between supply and demand, and the exterior costs on environment pollution, said an expert.

   It is necessary for China to adopt economic means and create energy-saving incentive mechanism in the work, which involve reform of price formation mechanism on energy and resources, and improvement of taxation policy.

   The Chinese government has reiterated its intention to meet strict energy efficiency and pollutant reduction targets, which it failed to reach last year, according to the work plan.

   The plan shows that China will stick to the original plan of energy saving as well as reducing major pollutant discharges by 10 percent.

   Under a five-year plan to 2010, China pledged to cut energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 20 percent, or four percent each year, but consumption fell by just 1.23 percent last year.

   Electricity, steel, nonferrous metals, construction materials, oil processing and chemicals, the six high energy-consuming and highly polluting industries, which account for nearly 70 percent of energy consumption and sulfur dioxide discharges of the entire industrial sector, grew by 20.6 percent in the first quarter of 2007, 6.6 percentage points higher than the same period a year earlier.

   According to the plan, China will also reform pricing mechanism for resource products, such as refined oil, natural gas and electricity, and restrict the export of high-energy consuming and heavy-polluting products.

   China will optimize energy use in high-energy consuming industries, such as steel, non-ferrous metal, petrochemical and cement production, realize energy-saving capacities of 50 million tons of standard coal in 2007 and 240 million tons by 2010.

   The country will save 31.5 million tons of standard coal this year and 118 million tons by 2010, and cut sulfur dioxide emissions by 400,000 tons in 2007 and by 2.4 million tons by 2010.

   To meet the goals, the government will accelerate eliminating out-dated production capacities and reduce chemical oxygen demand (COD) by 620,000 tons this year and by 1.38 million tons by 2010.