Air quality in the Chinese capital has improved year by year since 2001, said Yu Xiaoxuan, vice-director of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) Venue and Environment Department.

"I am pretty confident that Beijing will have fulfilled its environmental promises before the Olympic Games kick off," he told a press conference at the Beijing Olympic Media Center on Thursday.

When it bid for the right to hold the 2008 Games, Beijing pledged to bring down the content of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, nitric oxide and inhalable particles in the atmosphere to a level consistent with current Chinese standards. In the six subsequent years the amount of those pollutants has dropped by 13.8 percent on average. The sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide content in the air already meets the national standards, Yu said.

He added that the municipal government is going to take several measures to curb motor vehicle emissions and industrial pollutions to further improve air quality.

(BOCOG February 2, 2007)