BEIJING, Aug. 11 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese government will annually revise the list of "restrained" products in the process trade sector to establish a transparent regulatory system to address its trade imbalance, said an official with the Ministry of Commerce (MOC).

    It is the second major measure from the government after it putlabor-intensive, high polluting and high energy-consuming industries under restraint in 1999.

    The MOC and Customs have issued a policy to curb the development of the process trade in labor-intensive industries. The policy, effective from Aug. 23, will cover 1,853 products in the plastics, furniture and textiles and other labor-intensive industries.

    The move targets high polluting and high-energy-consuming industries in eastern regions. Companies engaged in the sectors will be required to lodge guarantee deposits in the Bank of China, while registering process trade contracts with the Customs.

    Traders of listed products with good Customs records must deposit equivalent to half the sum of customs duties and value-added tax, while those with records of law violations must deposit 100 percent.

    The deposits plus interest will be refunded after they prove to Customs that they have fulfilled the contracts by exporting qualified finished products before contracted deadlines.

    If the firms fail to meet contract requirements, they could lose their deposits and interest, according to the MOC.

    A joint meeting of the MOC, the General Administration of Customs, the Ministry of Finance, the State Administration of Taxation, the People's Bank of China, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange and the Bank of China is held periodically to coordinate their functions, according to a MOC statement.

    "Calculated on the current one-year lending rate, process traders can afford the deposits because they would keep just 600 million yuan (79 million U.S. dollars) as guarantee deposits while earning approximately 30 billion U.S. dollars from exports," said Wang Qinhua, director of the MOC's Department of Electromechanical Products and Science and Technology Industry.

    Wang said the move would pressure process trade firms to add more value to their products and shift process industries from eastern to central and western areas where the process trade volume accounts for merely 2.5 percent of the nation's total and the costs of production and labor are lower.

    Meanwhile, it would encourage large enterprises that maintained healthy growth to expand their business to design and research and develop their own products, said Wang.

    "The policy is not just an attempt to regularize the management of the process trade, but a step to promote the sector's healthy and sustainable development in the long run," said He Li, an official with China Customs.

    An official with the State Information Center has predicted that the nation's trade surplus will soar 55 percent year-on-year to 275 billion U.S. dollars this year despite the appreciating yuan and the scrapping and reduction of export rebates.

    Customs data show China's processing trade volume in the first six months this year rose 17.6 percent to 440.9 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for nearly half of the country's imports and exports.