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Coal traders look at cutting capacity

( chinadaily.com.cn )

Updated: 2016-07-26

At China’s Summer Coal Trade Meeting in the city of Taiyuan, Shanxi province's, recently the agenda was all about innovation and changing the coal industry through supply-side reforms, with Wang Xianzheng, the president of the China National Coal Assoc., on hand to address the gathering.

Wang explained that this year's efforts to cut overcapacity have seen some success, with coal prices rising slightly, but overall, the oversupply situation has not been changed a lot and a downward trend in prices likely to remain for some time.

Commenting further on this was Lian Weiliang, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, who stressed the need to make an effort to cut overcapacity more firmly.

Shanxi actually began a "cutting overcapacity in 276 working days" campaign this past April, with the goal of improving economic development and halting the difficulties many coal companies face and it has announced plans to reduce coal capacity by 20 million tons by the end of this year, and 100 million tons by 2020.

It expects to limit coal production to 1 billion tons and to cut the number of coal mines from 1,078 to around 900.

So, in the first half of this year it reduced coal output by 68.8 million tons, a decrease of 15 percent over last year.

Still, it is one of China’s major coal producers and coal is a pillar of its economy, but it has been trying to control the growth of coal production in recent years to lessen its dependence on coal.

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