Tighten supervision of subsidies for energy-saving appliances

TO ENCOURAGE GREEN CONSUMPTION, the State Council, China's cabinet, had subsidized energy-saving home appliance buyers by paying certain amounts to manufacturers who sold their products at discount from June 2012 to May 2013. Several home appliance makers have now been asked to pay back part of the subsidies because some miscalculations led to overpayment. But this is just one of the problems that affected the implementation of the policy, says an editorial in Southern Metropolis Daily:

The subsidy for energy-saving appliances did boost their sales, but the policy raised certain questions such as the possibility of government intervention in the market and its negative impact in the long run.

The most common question was about the policy's implementation. It was meant to encourage people to buy energy-saving appliances, but there were loopholes in its actual implementation and enterprises could have used them to cheat the government.