Beijing has unveiled the country's first municipality-level white paper on garbage treatment Wednesday, hoping to greatly improve its garbage treatment capacity by 2008, when the city will host the Olympic Games.

Beijing will invest some 3.2 billion yuan (about US$386 million) over the next five years to build waste treatment projects, according to the White Paper on Beijing Municipality's Household Garbage Treatment.

Apart from the current 17 garbage treatment plants in Beijing, the city will build another 15 new waste-handling centers, hoping to raise its daily garbage treatment capacity to 12,500 tons in 2008 from the current 8,800 tons.

The city's garbage is expected to increase by some 2 percent annually over the next few years, because of rapid population growth and economic development, according to the white paper.

"Our current garbage treatment capacity still fails to satisfy the requirements for hosting the Olympics in 2008, though the environment had greatly improved during the past few years," said Chen Wenzhan, chairman of the Beijing Municipal Administration Management Committee.

"For a cleaner and healthier environment, we need to standardize our waste treatment in accordance with the white paper," Chen said.

Every urban household in Beijing has to pay three yuan (about 36 cents) a month for garbage treatment, while the floating population has to pay two yuan per capita every month.

Whether the authorities will raise the garbage treatment fees in the next few years is still unknown.

Beijing has a population of some 13 million.

(Xinhua News Agency December 25, 2003)