Scrapped electricity surcharge puts spotlight on additional fees

ON THURSDAY, the State Grid Corporation of China, the national electricity supply monopoly, canceled the urban utilities surcharge it had been levying. Beijing Youth Daily comments:

The total amount of the surcharge collected nationwide by the State Grid exceeded tens of billions of yuan a year. However, the surcharge was never written on the receipt that residents received when they paid their electricity bills. The State Grid should be praised for putting an end to the fee because consumers have the right to know where their money goes.

However, according to reports, the canceled fee is only one of six additional fees charged consumers by the State Grid, which, added together, account for 6 percent of people's electricity bills. It is not yet known if the other five are to be canceled.

Further, electricity is only one of the utilities for which consumers pay such surcharges. Tap water, natural gas, the central heating in winter, even garbage disposal, for each of these services, residents must pay not only the initial price, but also various kinds of additional fees.

Even when you watch a film in the cinema, you have to pay an additional 5 percent fee for the development of domestic films.

It was in the 1960s that the government started collecting these additional fees, enlarging them in the 1980s. That was reasonable then, because the national economy was rather weak and the government needed to collect fees from the residents to support public projects. Since China is now the second largest economy in the world, it is time to cancel most, if not all, of these outdated fees.