The rural sewage treatment of the Ministry of Housing and Construction is limited to 3 state-owned enterprises 40.8 billion rural water supply cities.

I finally looked forward to a big meal, only to find that I didn't have my own share of the feast.

On November 11, the Village and Town Construction Department of the Ministry of Housing issued a letter on Please do a good job in the docking of projects in Rural domestic sewage treatment demonstration Counties [Jiancun Shuixin (2015) 106]. Among them, it is indicated that a national demonstration of rural domestic sewage treatment will be carried out in 100 counties (cities and districts) across the country, but only 3 state-owned enterprises will participate.

The vice president of a private environmental protection enterprise told the Huaxia Times that this is against the principle of market fairness, nor in line with the state's spirit of encouraging social capital to participate in the construction of rural human settlements, and belongs to an obvious administrative "Lalang match".

Xue Tao, executive director of the E20 Environmental Industry Research Institute, told reporters that there were shortcomings in the rural water market in the past. With the publication of documents such as "Water Ten articles," this market space has been released, and some people estimate that its scale will reach hundreds of billions of yuan, thus triggering competition among many environmental protection enterprises.

Letter No. 106 gives rise to controversy

[Jiancun Shuixin (2015) 106] said that the Ministry of Housing has initially decided to carry out a national demonstration of rural domestic sewage treatment in 100 counties (cities and districts). In order to promote the demonstration work, the Ministry of Housing and Construction coordinated the Agricultural Development Bank of China to provide long-term low-interest financial loan support, and organized the CNR Group Shandong Huateng Environmental Protection Technology Co., Ltd., Chuang Chuang Co., Ltd., Beijing Water Control Group and other large state-owned enterprises to participate. The housing urban-rural construction departments of Hebei, Shanxi, Yunnan and other 17 provinces, as well as the Beijing Municipal Water Bureau are invited to actively coordinate the model counties (cities and districts) in their areas with the Agricultural Development Bank, China Railway, Beijing Control, and the first to determine the intention of cooperation, and the relevant information should be reported to the department before November 20.

As soon as the document was published, it immediately caused controversy. Some private enterprises said that the document designated three state-owned enterprises as rural domestic sewage treatment enterprises, contrary to the principle of market fairness.

"with an extra threshold, local governments dare not take responsibility. Since the central government has recommended enterprises, give them directly." The vice president of the aforementioned private environmental protection enterprises said that they may think that these three state-owned enterprises can bring low-interest financial loan support, while other enterprises do not. There is already a bidding project they participated in, which eventually led to the creation of one of the three state-owned enterprises.

It's not just one company that has a problem. On November 20, the Environmental Services Chamber of Commerce of the all-China Federation of Industry and Commerce submitted to the Department of Village and Town Construction of the Ministry of Housing the proposal of the Environmental Chamber of Commerce on improving the docking of projects in rural domestic sewage treatment demonstration counties, which said that recently, the association has received a large number of phone calls and letters from member units, raising objections to the content of Jiancun Water letter (2015).

The Environmental Chamber of Commerce suggests that a supplement to this letter should be made in an appropriate way to encourage the extensive participation of all kinds of social capital with "enthusiasm, experience and technology", and encourage local governments, especially people's governments at the county level, to innovate their ideas. respect market principles, do not set a threshold, and extensively seek environmental protection enterprises suitable for the development of the region to actively participate in local rural environment, including sewage treatment projects.

Ma Hui, executive secretary of the Environmental Chamber of Commerce, told our reporter that this practice of the demonstration county is first of all commendable, and that it is a good thing for the government to introduce policies to promote the control of environmental pollution in rural areas. However, in the process of promotion, the duty of the government is to open the market and establish market rules, while the specific market behavior should be played by the market rules and done in accordance with the market rules.

"so far, the Ministry of Housing and Construction has not given a reply." Ma Hui said.

40.8 billion yuan market space

Why are private enterprises so sensitive to [Jiancun Shuixin (2015) 106]? Of course, interest is the primary reason.

In terms of the composition of the environmental protection industry, sewage treatment has always been one of the most important sectors. In sewage treatment, municipal sewage treatment has been the main force for a long time. However, after more than a decade of development, from 2006 to 2013, the sewage treatment rate of cities across the country has risen from 55.7% to 99.1%. The field of municipal sewage treatment is close to saturation, and enterprises in the industry are looking for a new "blue sea".

At the same time, there is a huge deficiency in the rural sewage treatment market. In 2012, the sewage treatment rate in villages across the country was only 7%, a huge gap from the 99.1% sewage treatment rate in cities and towns. According to the sewage treatment report of the prospective Industrial Research Institute, the discharge of chemical oxygen demand from agricultural sources in 2013 was as high as 11.258 million tons, accounting for 47.85% of the total chemical oxygen demand in wastewater in the country.

"without a solution to the problem of rural sewage, the problem of water pollution in China cannot be solved." Xue Tao said.

Why is there such a big gap? In Xue Tao's view, it is not that enterprises do not want to do it, but because there is no business model. Environmental protection industry is a highly policy-oriented industry, the lack of relevant policies at the national level, local governments will have no pressure to govern, and the market will naturally have no demand.

However, with the continuous introduction of relevant policies in recent years, the dawn of rural sewage treatment has emerged. According to the "Construction and Investment guidelines for Rural domestic sewage treatment projects" issued by the Ministry of Environmental Protection in November 2013, the unit investment price of decentralized rural sewage treatment facilities in 2014 was 5000 yuan / ton. The market estimates that the rural sewage discharge in 2017 will be about 14.8 billion tons. If the rural sewage treatment rate reaches 20%, the potential market size of rural sewage treatment in 2017 will reach 40.8 billion yuan, which does not include the scale of the operation market after the completion of the facility.

"the rural sewage treatment market is an undeveloped 'virgin land'. Although the scale of individual treatment is relatively small, there are 2856 counties, 40906 townships and hundreds of thousands of villages across the country, so the market scale will also be dozens of times that of municipal sewage treatment." Ma Hui said.

There are many problems to be solved

At present, a number of environmental protection enterprises have made high-profile claims to enter the rural water market.

Dong Zhiming, deputy general manager of Sander International, said that Sander Group began to lay out the rural water market in 2009 and began to explore the construction of sewage treatment projects in villages and towns in Fushun, Liaoning Province and other places in 2011. at present, it has undertaken sewage treatment projects in more than 300 towns and hundreds of villages, which belongs to enterprises that set foot in this field earlier in China.

A business manager of Shouchuang Co., Ltd. also told the Huaxia Times that rural sewage treatment and industrial sewage treatment are two major emerging markets, and the company's existing rural projects have been landed in Zhejiang, using the overall packaging model of taking the county as a unit, so it is profitable.

Ma Hui said that individual rural sewage treatment projects are relatively small, a day only a few thousand tons of treatment capacity, using the county as a whole packaging method, in order to achieve a certain scale and help to reduce costs.

In addition, China has not yet made clear the management and responsibility of rural sewage treatment, which varies greatly from place to place. Dong Zhiming said that some are under the control of the Water Bureau and some are under the control of the Housing and Construction Bureau. Billing methods are also varied, some by household, some by head, some by site (a site is given a certain amount of maintenance fees a year), and some by water. This is obviously very different from the management system of municipal sewage treatment.

"the business model, charging mechanism and other aspects are not perfect, there is no payment subject." Xue Tao said that the result is prone to arrears, investment is not safe.

Dong Zhiming said that the financial resources of the county-level government are limited, and it is not realistic for ordinary people to pay the bill, and it is suggested that the central and provincial governments should increase policy support and financial transfer payments. In addition, some financial supporting tools, such as policy-oriented low-interest loans, need to be provided.

The good news is that in September this year, the Village and Town Construction Department of the Ministry of Housing and Construction invited many environmental protection enterprises, including the Sander Group, to hold meetings to understand the technical level, technical standards, and equipment of rural sewage treatment, and hoped to form an interactive mechanism of "experts + enterprises + ministries" to solve all kinds of problems encountered in the process of rural sewage treatment, which gave hope to entrepreneurs like Dong Zhiming.