PBC will hold "blacklist" of polluters

Zhang Lijun, vice director of SEPA said the agency would blacklist companies that violate environmental laws and include them on a database, which will be submitted to the People's Bank of China (PBC) from April 1.

Zhang said that he hoped the cooperation between SEPA and the PBC would force enterprises to be more self-disciplined in environmental protection and to control their pollutant discharge.

The PBC is China's central bank, responsible for setting monetary policy and regulating interbank activities, as well as managing foreign exchange and anti-money laundering infrastructure. It is not yet clear how the SEPA database will be administered within PBC, or how "blacklists" within it will translated down to the day-to-day operations of lending institutions - Blue Skies China hopes to follow this up as more information is made available.

SEPA has already begun building the database; last year it says it dispatched 1.67 million environmental protection supervisors to inspect more than 720,000 enterprises nationwide. It identified 28,000 violations and shut down 3,176 enterprises - these findings have already been included.