China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has issued a mandatory plan for production of rare earth products and smelting & separating rare earth products, adjusting down their 2009 output targets by 8.1 percent and 6.9 percent, respectively, from last year.

This move is aimed to check blind production of rare earth enterprises and protect the country's resources.

According to the plan, the production target for rare earth products is set at 119,500 tons for this year, down 8.1 percent year on year, while that for smelting & separating rare earth products at 110,700 tons, down 6.9 percent.

China's regulator upgrades mandatory management plan on the production of rare earth products every year.

Affected by international financial crisis, the country's rare earth products output fell last year, but its output of smelting & separating rare earth products topped the annual target to 144,000 tons.

China's Ministry of Land and Resources announced in early May to impose a ceiling on the output of mineral resources like tungsten, antimony and rare earth in 2009, with tungsten ore concentrate output limited to 68,555 tons, rare earth ore to 82,320 tons, and antimony ore to 90,180 tons.

http://www.chinamining.org/Policies/2009...