The preliminary results of the "China Green National Accounting Study Report 2004″ shows that economic losses caused by environmental pollution reached RMB511.8 billion, accounting for 3.05% of China's national GDP in 2004.

"China Green National Accounting Study Report 2004″ has been jointly issued to the public by the State Environmental Protection Administration of China and the National Bureau of Statistics of China. The two agencies say this is the first report on environmentally-adjusted GDP accounting in China.

Vice Minister Pan Yue of SEPA and Commissioner Qiu Xiaohua of NBS both indicated that calculated environmental damage cost is only a part of actual resources and environmental costs due to localization of departments and limits of technologies, and the integrated green GDP accounting still needs more arduous efforts and has a long way to go.

Green National Accounting, or Green GDP Accounting, refers to an accounting system deducting natural resources depletion costs and environmental degradation costs so as to evaluate the quality of economic development in real sense. The Green GDP Accounting Research Project was launched in March 2004 jointly by SEPA and NBS.

In the past two years, the technical team conducted accounting analysis on physical quantification of environmental pollution, imputed treatment cost and environmental degradation cost for 42 industries and 3 regions of the East, the Middle and the West. According to the accounting conclusion, economic loss caused by environmental pollution is RMB511.8 billion, accounting for 3.05% of national GDP in 2004, among of which environmental costs by water pollution, by air pollution and by solid wastes and pollution accidents are RMB286.28 billion, RMB219.8 billion and RMB5.74 billion, accounting for 55.9%, 42.9% and 1.2% of the total costs, respectively.