The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the Electricity Regulatory Commission (ERC) will jointly send an inspection team to ensure the implementation of differential electricity price in some regions.

The NDRC made the announcement on Wednesday.

To restrict the operation of enterprises with high energy consumption, the government has decided to set different electricity prices for different types of producers.

Enterprises consuming huge energy of coke and aluminum should pay more for the same amount of electricity usage than others, according to the governmental policy.

Some local governments, fearing that such policy would affect economic growth, still gave the same treatment to all kinds of enterprises to protect the high-energy-consumption industry.

The NDRC and the Electricity Regulatory Commission, therefore, decided to send inspection teams to eight provincial areas including Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Henan, Hunan, Sichuan, Guizhou, Shaanxi and Gansu.

Local authorities and departments that did not implement the policy well will be criticized and punished, the NDRC said.

(Xinhua News Agency December 14, 2006)