Subsidies retained for green cars: minister

BEIJING -- The central goverment will increase its subsidies for energy-saving cars and vehicles that run on alternate fuel sources in 2013, a ministry official has said.

Miao Wei, minister of industry and information technology, said the country will fine-tune the subsidy policy by introducing a ranking system that measures the amount of energy that a given car is capable of saving.

He suggested that vehicles with higher efficiency will receive more subsidies.

Industrial analysts consider the subsidy increase to be necessary, as the promotion of new-energy vehicles is still falling short of expectations due to inadequate support.

China rolled out specific measures to subsidize clean-energy cars for private buyers in 2010 to boost the sector, but sales remained lackluster due to high production costs.

In 2012, sales of new-energy cars amounted to 12,791 units, almost double the number recorded in the previous year, data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers showed.

According to the country's guideline on environmentally friendly vehicles, sales of new-energy cars are expected to total 500,000 units by the end of 2015.