Beijing has been suffering droughts since 2000. The urban expansion and
economic development have resulted in the city's shortfall of an average of 400
million cubic meters of water a year. For 2006 alone, Beijing is short of 794
million cubic meters of water and the figure may climb to 1.182 billion cubic
meters by 2010, according to Zheng Qiuli, an official with the municipal water
authority.
Under-pricing water has been considered a major cause of
China's water over consumption. The current prices of water consumed in China's
urban area are tinted with a strong touch of welfare and public good, and have
seriously deviated from its real value, said An Fenglong, president of
Beijing-based Haoda Anbo Water Resources Exploitation Co., Ltd.
"The
unreasonably low price of water means losses for water supply and sewage
treatment companies and contributes to the public's low awareness level of the
need to save water," he said.
In the past 15 years, Beijing municipal
government has raised water rates nine times. The current price is 3.7 yuan (46
U.S. cents) per cubic meter, which registered the highest water price in China,
more than 30 times the price of 0.12 yuan (1.2 cents) in 1991.
Nationwide, the cost of residential water use rose by 42 percent from 2000 to
2005, according to a survey of 36 cities by the National Bureau of
Statistics.
However, the average household water expenditure in 2004
still only accounted for 1.8 percent of the household income in Beijing. The
upper limit of this ratio set by the World Bank for the developing countries is
5 percent.
Thus, pricing and demand management now plays a growing role in Water
governance in China. "Citizens should pay more money for the water they use. So
should they for the cost of treating the wastewater they produce and the cost of
building facilities for exploring water resources," said Zhang Kunmin,
vice-president of Chinese Association on Sustainable Development.
He said
the water price in Shanghai in the 1970s was 0.5 yuan (6 U.S. cents) per cubic
meter against the average 50 yuan (6 U.S.dollars) monthly income. "So my
mother-in-law valued each drop of water by mopping the floor with the water used
to wash face," he said. However in Beijing, the water price by then was 0.05
yuan (0.6 cents) per cubic meter, "it is common to see water dripping from the
pipes in the public."
While the authority believes the NDRC pricing
regulation can help to supervise the water cost and save water, the public
doubts about what is behind the rises.
