The Ministry of Ecology and Environment ("MEE") and the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce ("ACFIC") have recently issued the Opinions on Supporting and Serving the Green Development of Private Enterprises (the "Opinions").
The Opinions call for the coordinated progress in high-quality economic growth and high-level protection of ecological environment, adding that efforts shall be made to adopt various law-based, market-oriented, scientific and technological, and administrative approaches, attach equal importance to regulation enhancement and service improvement, advocate both incentives and constraints and punishment, encourage private businesses to take active part in the tough battle of preventing and cleaning up pollution, assist them in solving their difficulties in environmental cleanup, boost the capacity for green development and create a level playing field. Accordingly, the Opinions roll out 18 measures, among which are "improving the market access mechanism", "optimizing environment-related regulations and standards" and "carrying out preferential fiscal and tax policies". Among others, the Opinions expressly state that, active measures will be taken to promote the public-private-partnership ("PPP") mode in the ecological environment sector, encourage the establishment of third-party guaranteed payment platforms for PPP projects targeting the ecological environment field and environmental cleanup projects of the government and state-owned enterprises, and prompt local governments and state-owned enterprises to strictly fulfill contracts according to law and prevent arrears in the payment for private businesses' environmental protection projects.