According to the Ministry of Finance on December 17, after discussed by the Customs Tariff Committee of the State Council and approved by the State Department, our country will adjust import and export duties on January 1, 2009, mainly concerning most favored nation tariff, annual interim tax rate, conventional tariff, preferential tariff, and tax regulation.

According to the Ministry Of Finance, the total items of import and export duties will be increased from 7758 in 2008 to 7868 in 2009 after adjustment. With this tax reduction, except five products including strawberry which have another 1-year tax reduction term, our country has basically fulfilled all commitments on tax reduction while entering the WTO, with the general duty level from 15.3% to 9.8%, among which the average tax rate of agricultural products is 15.2% and the average tax rate of industrial products is 8.9%.

It is described that our country will continue to fulfill the commitment on tariff diminution while entering the WTO in 2009, further reduce import tariffs on five products including strawberry and continue tariff quota management on 7 agricultural products including wheat, mealier, rough rice, rice, sugar, wool, top wool and cotton and 3 fertilizers including urea, compound fertilizer and ammonium monoacid phosphate. We will continue to impose sliding duty on import of certain quantity of cotton beyond tariff quota and keep the tax rate unchanged, continue to impose 1% of provisional quota tax rate on urea, compound fertilizer and ammonium monoacid phosphate, continue to impose specific duty or compound duties on 55 products including frozen broiler and lower the specific duty rate on 11 kinds of films.

At the same time, to effectively give play to the economic leverage function of tariff policy, push economical structure adjustment and development mode transition, further enlarge import of advanced technologies, equipment and key spare parts, meet relevant requirements for domestic socioeconomic development, promote resource saving and environmental protection and improve the standard of living, our country will impose low import interim tax rate on over 670 kinds of products, mainly including the resource and energy source products such as coal, fuel oil and rock material, the key raw materials and spare parts such as ammonia, ethoxyline resin, Polaroid for LCD, stepless change compressor for air conditioner and large-scale wrecker chassis, advanced industrial and agricultural equipment such as air-jet loom, automatic spooler, big-powered tractor and large-scale reaper, the products relevant to public health such as vaccine, non-obstruct elevator and ceramics and some household utility devices. We will continue to impose alternative duties on imported native rubber.

In addition, to further confine export of products with high energetic consumption and pollutions, our country will continue to impose export taxes on charred coal, crude oil, metallic ore sand, ferroalloy and steel feed in mode of interim tax rate, special export tax on compound fertilizer and other raw materials with reduced tax rate and seasonal export tax on urea, ammonium phosphate and double super-phosphate with variable import levies for export tax in low season of fertilizer consumptions.

To enlarge bilateral and multilateral business and economic cooperation and promote regional economic development, our country will impose more preferential conventional tariff than the most favored nation tariff on some imports from ten countries of ASEAN, Chile, Pakistan, New Zealand, Singapore, Korea, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in accordance with relevant free trade conventions including China-ASEAN, China-Chile, China-Pakistan, China-New Zealand and China-Singapore. Under the more close business and economic relation framework among Mainland, Hong Kong and Macao, we will continue to adopt zero duty on the products manufactured in Hong Kong and Macau and with relevant origin privilege standards established. We will continue to impose preferential tariffs on some products form 41 least developed countries including 4 Southeast Asian countries such as Laos, 31 African countries such as Sudan and other 6 countries such as Yemen.

The Ministry Of Finance said this adjustment would promote stable increase and structural optimization of import and export trade, give play to macroscopic readjustment and control function of duties with positive financial policies and promote stable and rapid development of economy.