Print
Email to Friends
Comment (Jin said that the government will spare no effort in perfecting the related fuel tax reform plans to ensure that the tax collection will be conducive to the sustainable development of the national economy and industrial restructuring.
Fuel tax collection, a sensitive issue, has been on the agenda of China's overall economic plan, but is still awaiting a proper opportunity such as lower international oil price.
The collection of fuel tax is believed by some experts to be one of the sharpest weapons to check China's rising oil demand.
Fuel tax will push more consumers to buy energy-saving cars, and depend less upon car driving. In some European cities, people prefer to use public transportation system although they have their own cars.
Low emission and new energy source to replace gasoline are on the forefront of auto technology, so the tax leverage may promote the technology upgrade and industrial restructure of China's auto manufacture, an expert noted.
In spite of its advantages, the implementation of fuel tax collection has been delayed again and again out of the concern that imposing the tax at a time of high oil prices could lift up China's CPI (consumer price index) and aggregate inflation.
Another reason for the lagging implementation of China's fuel tax is still the interests distribution among different units, such as the transportation and taxation institutions, the central and the local government, said Zhou Dadi, director of the Institute of Energy Research of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).
China's energy consumption efficiency is quite low compared with the world average level and its industrialization and urbanization process promise higher energy demand in the future.
China now still sets the fixed tax rate upon the same type of vehicles, no matter how frequently the car drivers use them in a year.
It is widely estimated that the initial fuel tax rate will be 30 percent for gasoline, and it will be raised step by step later to the levels in developed nations, say 120 percent as in Japan. The rate for diesel will be lower than that for gasoline.
